OLDS — A major focus for economic development in Olds this year will be pursuing potential investors, helping local businesses looking to expand and fleshing out a website under development.
That’s the message Sandra Blyth, the town’s economic development officer, gave during an approximately 25-minute presentation to town council.
Blyth said town staff are currently wooing a couple of investors who have indicated interest in about $350,000 worth of land.
“They’re very active, so fingers crossed we can land them,” she said.
Blyth said one woman who invested in the community is already looking at expanding her business.
“I believe her original investment was around $300,000,” she said.
“It was a basic retail business that’s expanded to a potential manufacturing opportunity, which could be a manufacturing process that could be unique to this area.
“I think right now, the only one in Canada is in B.C., so hopefully we can land that.”
She said much of the fourth quarter of the year was taken up by meeting with developers and builders.
Blyth said the department is pursing eight leads on potential investment/development, three of which are “very active.”
She was told there’s a need for more rental warehousing space.
“We had a lot of discussions around higher density development and what that could look like in the future,” Blyth said.
"The next step is meeting with financial institutions and potential investors.”
The message the department received was that Olds needed to collaborate as part of a region.
During that quarter, she also met with Olds College officials to see how her department can team up with them.
The website Blyth announced is designed to dovetail with the services that local realtors provide.
She said potential investors will be able to go in, look at properties, including square footage, and be steered directly to realtors if they wish.
Much like realtors’ sites, it will include photos of various aspects of the property. A mortgage calculator has been built in as well.
"What’s really cool about it is when they get in there, this thing will track in the back end all the analysis around number of hits on the property, what information they were looking for on that property and so forth,” Blyth said.
Conversely, people wishing to sell property will be able to develop a profile. Blyth stressed that the town will approve everything on the site before it goes online.
She said information about the community as a whole will be on the website, including information about schools and the downtown area.
Information on the site will be linked to social media as well.
Blyth said 10 to 13 properties were already listed on their interim web page.
Efforts are underway to create videos regarding local properties and businesses.
“Over the next year, it’s really going to be a learning curve, figuring out well, what is our market’s interest? Where are they spending most of their time? What videos are they liking?" she said.
“And then from that, we start to get some understandings and then we produce more in that vein."
Blyth also noted that a few businesses started up during the past couple of years of the COVID-19 pandemic. Some even expanded. The town wants to profile them too.
She conceded that some businesses owners really have to be persuaded to have videos done about their enterprises.
“It takes a little bit, right? You want to do a video and people get a little freaked out about doing the video, but we eventually talk them into it and walk them through that, so we’re in the process of all that right now.”
Council voted to accept Blyth’s presentation as information.
