Business View Magazine | January 2020

337 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE JANUARY 2020 a fascinating tale of two regions. Located in BC’s southern interior, the RDKB is one of 29 regional districts in the province and consists of eight incorporated municipalities (Fruitvale, Grand Forks, Greenwood, Midway, Montrose, Rossland, Trail, Warfield) and five unincorporated electoral areas. Business View Magazine recently spoke with Roly Russell, Electoral Area ‘D’/Rural Grand Forks Director; Terry Van Horn, Executive Director for the Lower Columbia Initiative Corporation (east side); Jennifer Wetmore, General Manager of Community Futures; and Mark Andison, CAO of the RDKB, to gather insights into the intriguing, dynamic district they represent. The following is an edited transcript of that conversation. BVM: Can you share economic development highlights from RDKB east? Van Horn: “The Lower Columbia Initiative Corporation has spent a lot of time in the last nine years, from an economic development standpoint, identifying our assets in the east side of the RDKB. We have a diverse group of communities from a world-famous ski hill in one to the world’s largest integrated lead-zinc industrial smelter in another. In identifying our assets, there was certainly tourism, but global leadership in metallurgical and advanced materials is our key asset and our differentiator. For years, we tried to hide the fact we had this huge smelter in the middle of our region, but, in reality, it provides a life for most of us. “My biggest deliverable was to increase the visibility of the region; that was what our stakeholders wanted from the economic development office. So, we came up with a strategy called Metal Tech Alley, which is all about clustering those assets in the metallurgical and technology sectors. And technology workers – one of the biggest advantages is that people can live in our communities and work globally for big players like NASA, Amazon, and Google because they’re REGIONAL DI STR I CT OF KOOTENAY BOUNDARY , BC