By Curtis Galbraith

Local Business

County of Grande Prairie launches third phase of business survey

Jun 22, 2021 | 5:30 AM

The third phase of the County of Grande Prairie’s Business Retention & Expansion survey is now underway.

The first two phases were done in 2018 and 2019.

County Director of Planning and Development Services Nick Lapp says they will be contacting a new bunch of businesses for this round.

“The goal is to help us understand the many types of businesses we have located in the county, their overall satisfaction levels in doing business in the county, several factors that lead to that satisfaction like the availability of services, space, the availability of skilled labour.”

Lapp says last time, that satisfaction level was over 90 per cent.

He adds there were some things that stood out from those first two editions.

“We heard concern on the availability of broadband internet service in some areas and so some of those results helped us direct our economic development department to pursue that with service providers and look at some gaps in areas. Council is doing some additional work in terms of trying to develop a strategy to see broadband coverage increased throughout the whole county.”

Lapp says what difference it will make doing phase three during the pandemic will be determined later.

“I guess we’ll look to understand that after and see if there is a shift in any particular area that will allow us to tailor our economic development program to respond to that where we can.”

Lapp says those businesses chosen to take part will be called at random between now and July 16 and asked to take part in the 15-minute survey. The results are used to guide future County programming. Lapp says once the survey is complete, a report will be compiled and presented to County Council.