Business View Magazine - April 2016 19
community and the supply chain that fed into three
GM factories created thousands of additional jobs,”
he laments.
While a much reduced GM still has a footprint in St.
Catharines, and the city also has a decent range of
high-tech manufacturers and service companies,
Sendzik says that over the last several years, tran-
sitioning out of manufacturing while attempting to
replace those lost jobs via another economic engine
that could power the city’s economy, was a major
area of focus for the city administration, nearby Brock
University, and private developers.
The mayor talks about some of the civic building proj-
ects taken on, and recently completed, by the city:
“Within the past two years, we opened up a 5,000-
seat spectator sports facility that’s home to the Ni-
agara IceDogs, an Ontario Hockey League team, built
in the heart of the downtown,” he begins. “We built it
in an area that was underutilized and that had been
vacant for 30 or 40 years. And through ingenuity and
design work, built this facility that connects right into
the heart of our downtown core. It’s built with no park-
ing lot, so the parking is on the main downtown streets
and two parking garages. It was designed as a walk-
AT A GLANCE
WHO:
St. Catharines, Ontario
WHAT:
A city of 130,000
WHERE:
On the southeast shore of Lake Ontario
WEBSITE
:
