By IAN ROSS
Northern Ontario Business
North Bay community development leaders are anxiously waiting for the province to unveil its timetable for the four-laning completion of the lasting remaining stretch of the southern portion of Highway 11.
They harbour little doubt once the project is finished south of the city the widened link will open up substantial business opportunities similar to that of Huntsville’s experience over the last 20 years of building a thriving automotive-parts sector and hotbed for active retirement living.
The construction of a six-kilometre stretch between Katrine and Emsdale is underway. The $30-million project is expected to be open in the fall of
2005.
A newly completed 10-kilometre leg between Trout Creek and South River is now open, while planning studies and environmental assessment have been completed for the remaining 41 kilometres. About 120 individual properties have been acquired by the province.
However, to date, the government has given no timeframe on when the four-laning project will be complete, an area of deep consternation among civic leaders in northeastern Ontario. The local leaders fear financial resources may be shifted west to fast-track the completion of the Highway 69 four-laning project between Parry Sound and Sudbury.
North Bay Mayor Vic Fedeli says he was assured by Northern Development and Mines Minister Rick Bartolucci during an October gathering of northern mayors in Sault Ste. Marie that the province will unveil its highway policy before year’s end.
“He told us the report will come out before the end of the year and that will, hopefully, alleviate our fears, when we see a timetable in the budget.”
However, since a highway construction timetable remains unknown, Fedeli says it is premature to strategize how best to promote the city to outside investors that North Bay - once the remaining 41-kilometre four-lane connection is complete - is only a two-and-half hour drive from the Greater Toronto Area.
Among city council’s economic priorities for the coming year is attracting at least one new “healthy-sized industry” for the city’s neglected 112-acre east-end industrial park, says Fedeli. The fully serviced lots are selling for $1 per acre.
“We think manufacturers don’t need to be in $500,000-an-acre properties in Mississauga or Brampton, when we’re so close,” says Fedeli. “To get from Mississauga to downtown Toronto can be a two-hour drive these days. It’s just gridlock to Toronto.
The city has launched an aggressive marketing campaign of cheap industrial land to attract tenants by going after the GTA market. They began in mid-October with a print campaign in the Globe and Mail newspaper.
“Once the highway is done, we’re hoping to make the case to get out of the gridlock and come up here.”
The city’s move to lower industrial taxes by 66 per cent over the last three years is “showing signs” of producing results, says Rick Evans,
manager of the Mayor’s Office of Economic Development.
The city continues to entrench itself as a global mining supply hub with a number of local manufacturers, including deep mining contractors like Cementation Skanska Canada either consolidating or expanding their presence. Most of it is due to the booming global commodities sector and North Bay’s proximity to the various mining camps, but “you can be sure that all those projects were influenced by a reduced tax rate in terms of the multinational investment,” says Evans.
He says the improved highway connections will open up all kinds of opportunities in tourism, lumber producers and parts manufacturers in northeastern Ontario and western Quebec.
“The (tourism) product in the North is under-utilized,” says Evans, particularly the tourism meccas of Temagami and Algonquin Park.
“When (the highway) is open, then it’s really easy to push the North.
“We’ve got an economic region separated by a provincial border. If you look at Timiskaming and a portion of the Abitibi on the Quebec side, they’re every bit a part of our economic region.
“What the highway means to us, it means just as much to other folks in a wider corridor,” says Evans, that includes communities in West Nipissing
to the west and east towards the Quebec with major forestry producers such as Tembec.
