St. Albert is seeking a consultant to create a tool to help municipalities in the Edmonton region evaluate investment opportunities.
The investment site identification methodology and evaluation tool will be part of an ongoing project called Collaborative Economic Development (CED). The initiative has been a little over two years in the making, as the 13 municipalities signed a memorandum of understanding in April 2021.
The goal of the project is to have a framework municipalities can use when exploring opportunities within or outside municipal limits city spokesperson Cory Sinclair said in an email.
With the first two phases of the project now complete, Sinclair said the next step is to develop a methodology and evaluation tool municipalities can use to determine the value and timeliness of potential development locations.
“The site identification methodology will provide objective criteria for evaluating potential CED investment sites based on site attributes and investor requirements,” Sinclair said. “Municipalities will be able to use the tool to see how a potential site aligns with these criteria and use this information to target or attract specific industries or investment opportunities.”
According to a request for proposals (RFP) published by St. Albert on behalf of all regional partners earlier this month, the methodology and evaluation tool will “analyze and evaluate the Edmonton Global Target Sectors for the Edmonton region as a means to identify unique target sector requirements.”
Edmonton Global is a non-profit company that seeks to attract foreign investment to the Edmonton area, and over 15 municipalities in the region are shareholders.
Edmonton Global's target sectors the RFP refers to include manufacturing and advanced manufacturing, food and agriculture, health and life sciences, and energy and clean technology.
“The (consultant) will develop a site identification methodology that will establish key measurable sector-specific criteria that can be used to evaluate sites for suitability for specific types of investment opportunities by target sector,” the RFP states. “These key criteria must be developed for each of the target sectors utilizing a multi-criteria decision-making analysis and be applicable to all parts of the region, allowing partners to evaluate potential sites to determine the best development sites across jurisdictions.”
The RFP says some of the criteria that must be included in the evaluation tool include servicing requirements such as utilities and public transit, labour requirements, and locational needs, such as supply-chain requirements and proximity to transportation networks.
The budget for hiring a consultant for this phase of the CED project, the RFP says, is $125,000. Sinclair said although the RFP was published by St. Albert, the cost is covered through a $450,000 grant the regional partners received for the project from the provincial government. The city is responsible for managing the grant, Sinclair added.
The RFP says the consultant's deadline to develop the site identification methodology and evaluation tool will be the end of November.
“When complete, the CED Framework will support the efforts of municipalities to attract investment and jobs to the region by providing leaders with additional information to make data-driven decisions around infrastructure investments in their communities,” Sinclair said.
