Business View Magazine November-December 2018

242 243 strong sectors such as advanced manufacturing in steel and fabrication.We have a growing ICT sector, anchored, in part, by the headquarters of the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Commission being here. Our geography and sense of place, a tremendous quality of life, and low housing costs. Enjoying all that, our location on the hub of the Great Lakes has to offer –Lake Superior, the North Channel, St. Joseph Island to the east, and northern Michigan to the south. Being a border community also provides advantages for logistics to service North American business markets.” Hollingsworth: “The EDC is a separate not-for- profit organization funded in part by the City. We’re responsible for working with the City and community stakeholders to advance goals around small business development, export opportuni- ties, tracking investment to the community, and tourism marketing. A lot of individuals commute into SSM to work every day.We’re an international community on the hub of northern Michigan, with an international bridge that connects Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario with the American community of Sault Ste. Marie.We’re quite proud of that and we do a lot of work with our colleagues in the ‘Michi- gan Soo’, as it’s called.” BVM: What are your major industries? Hollingsworth: “Historically, SSM was built around the steel industry. Algoma Steel is our major employer and that spun off into a lot of service sector industries that support steel fab- SAULT STE. MARIE, ONTARIO rication.We’re also in a pretty diverse arbore- al forest fiber basket, so we have secondary manufacturing around the forestry sector of products such as medium-density fiberboard and floor-joist systems. “Logistically speaking, we have excellent transportation links. Because of the water- ways, we have great marine connections. The TransCanada Highway intersects the commu- nity, east and west, and we’re at the northern terminus of I-75 in Sault, Michigan.We’re also served by CN and CP Rail, and we have a full-service airport with Air Canada and Porter Airlines providing regular flights. In the winter, Sunwing offers direct flights from Sault Ste. Marie to the Dominican Republic. And twenty minutes south of Sault, Michigan, Chippewa County International Airport has direct flights to Minneapolis and Detroit.” BVM: Are there any renewable energy initia- tives in the works? Vair: “We have some exciting projects under- way. Council has approved a $30 million smart grid project. That is a public-private partner- ship with our municipally-owned utility and Infrastructure Energy and it will be, as far as we know, the first community-wide smart grid