Business View Civil and Municipal | May 2021

147 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL MAY 2021 PORTAGE LA PRA I R I E , MANI TOBA will be a lot of other businesses that either grow or actually get established to help service these larger companies,” says Ferris. “We are going to see an increase in trucking and warehousing and those kind of small and medium size businesses in the region just because we’ve got two large companies here.” Portage la Prairie’s retail and hospitality sector has also seen a boost, with 20 new businesses opening in 2020 alone. According to Ferris, “These businesses opened during the COVID-19 pandemic, including a number of restaurants. Talk about optimistic! It’s quite a challenge to open a new business anytime. And some of our Roquette and the key individuals at Simplot is that they recognize that they were wanted. We wanted to have their business and we did what we had to do to get their business here. We wanted to see that investment and we wanted to be partners in this investment and their operations going forward. The City and the RM of Portage partnered up as we do in so many other things and we worked closely together to try to attract this industry and make sure their investment came to our region.” With all the new regional investment, comes even more growth in other areas. “What typically happens, and we are seeing it now, is that there