Civil and Municipal - Mar 2023

125 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 4, ISSUE 3 Sandra Blyth, Economic Development Officer shares, “We are a population of 9,209 people with 42,000 in the region. Our commuter shed is about 500 thousand people within an hour’s drive of Olds. We are located on the main agriculture corridor , between Edmonton and Calgary, which serves about 100,000 vehicles a day. We are dead center in the middle of that, which puts us in a very viable position for attracting investment.” With plans to develop a regional economic strategy, Blyth relays that it will be focused on creating a competitive business environment that emphasizes growth in local industries, as well as assessing supply chains to understand what export companies are looking for in a healthy business environment. “That’s a huge strategy that’s going to be underway this year, and will encompass the whole region,” she says. “In addition to that, investment attraction has been a major focus over the last OLDS , ALBERTA year.” A new marketing arm called Invest Olds has been developed as part of this attraction effort, marketing both the town and the region. Blyth elaborates, “Invest Olds is in the process of developing a website, sales funnel, and various promotional tools to attract investment to the region. We’ve already been very successful in that.” Along with this investment attraction, the town is preparing to welcome growth, guided by the question, “Are we truly investment ready?” Meetings both internally, and with builders and developers, businesses, and industries have been directed at answering this question, leading to the formation of a Technical Readiness Team. This team has streamlined the development process to make it easier for investors to choose Olds as a place to invest. As Blyth explains, “ Potential Investors can come in and meet with our entire Technical Readiness Team in an hour and cover all the major topics