The city is looking for a few business leaders in the community to help guide its economic development efforts and potentially even help reel in a few big catches.
Guy Boston, St. Albert’s executive director of economic development, said Monday the city is officially accepting applications from the public for its new economic development advisory board.
“We are looking for people that have a strong business affinity or affiliation, if you will, that can bring that skill set to the table for Economic Development to tap into,” Boston said.
Council in March voted to replace the St. Albert economic development advisory committee with the new advisory board. The new board will be smaller and will be more involved in helping bring more development to St. Albert than the previous committee was, said Boston.
“We certainly want to have this board to have this participating role,” Boston said. “One of the first things we might do is change the name to something more reflective of St. Albert, if the board decides to.”
Boston used hotels as an example – if the city wanted to attract more hotels, the new board might form a sub-committee to explore how it might be done. The members of that sub-committee might even pitch their ideas to hotel operators themselves.
“We have our own ideas of what we can do but the board is going to have a great opportunity to work with us,” Boston said. “If they prefer, if that little committee prefers to work from what we’ve got, it can do that. Potentially there’s even a board member that comes with us when it’s time to pitch.”
Under its terms of reference, the new board will have a maximum of 13 members. Of that total, four will be former members of the St. Albert economic development advisory committee and four will be members from the Brand Leadership Team. Terms of service will be two years in length.
Boston and his team is also looking for board members with specific backgrounds, such as a local business owner and operator, residential and industrial land developers or a finance professional. The full list can be found at www.cultivatebusiness.ca
Boston said he is still working on a way to include the city’s school districts in some way after the public school board expressed disappointment it was not included. The city’s school districts were members of the former committee but were not included when the advisory board was formed.
Anyone interested should visit www.cultivatebusiness.ca.
