By Sheldon Spackman

Economic Development

Majority of businesses call Blackfalds a ‘good to excellent’ place to operate

Jul 24, 2019 | 3:44 PM

New benchmarks are now in place for the Town of Blackfalds that offer greater clarity on how local businesses are doing in the community.

From March 29 – May 10 of this year, 103 Blackfalds businesses took part in an online Business Satisfaction Survey, which according to Town of Blackfalds economic development officer Jennifer Hartigh, also offered insight into what can be focused on to improve the community’s strong business environment.

“We had an economic development business plan done-up back in 2015 and it made a number of recommendations for the community with respect to working with our businesses,” says Hartigh. “We’ve implemented a number of those recommendations and one of the final ones then was to go out to the community and see if anything we’ve been doing was making a significant difference and find out what still needed to be done.”

Overall, Hartigh says the survey results indicate Blackfalds has a fairly satisfied business community.

“I believe it was 74 per cent of our businesses that responded, said that Blackfalds was a good to excellent place to operate a business,” recalls Hartigh. “We’re pleased with that but it doesn’t mean that we’re not going to try to move the needle so that the next time we do a survey, that number is even higher.”

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Hartigh points out a number of strengths the local business community enjoys.

“We have a pretty great infrastructure system in place, we’re a new community, so things like roads and communications infrastructure, water-sewer, are all top-notch there for businesses,” says exclaims. “We’re in a great location according to the businesses, access to market is good, transportation of goods is good, quality of life is very good here in Blackfalds and of course the growth in the community is quite impressive as well.”

Hartigh acknowledges though, there are always opportunities to improve.

“One of the identified items is related again to the growth and the newness in our community, because most of our buildings are quite new,” she points out. “That means that the tax assessments are then higher on those buildings, so we have had businesses mention that the cost of lease or their operating costs are a bit high. So we’ll definitely have to work with some of our property owners and developers and keep an eye on our mill rates and tax assessments to make sure that we’re not pricing ourselves out of the market.”

Hartigh notes however, there will now be a few areas of focus moving forward.

“I think we’re definitely going to be focusing on the items in which we have a lower than 50 per cent good to excellent satisfaction rating,” she explains. “The exact tactics, I don’t know at this time. The Town does have an economic development and tourism committee, and so myself and those folks are going to have a look at those particular data sets and determine what it is that we can do to address those, so that’s probably the next steps starting this fall.”

Being done for the very first time in Blackfalds, Hartigh feels the process is an important first-step in helping to establish where they are currently.

“There’s always opinions and perceptions, but it’s really important to engage the business community and find out first-hand from them what their issues are and what their needs are,” says Hartigh. “And work with them to make sure that we’re improving the environment for local businesses and the community as a whole. This is really where the work begins for us now!”