By IAN ROSS
Kenora continues to market itself as a value-added centre for forest products - home to the world’s largest TimberStrand plant, the new Trus Joist mill, which began operating last October.
Trus Joist is the centrepiece and anchor tenant of an 80-acre fully serviced industrial park on Jones Road. The plant’s official grand opening took place in early May.
The TimberStrand plant, which employs 218 workers, uses hardwood fibre from birch and poplar.
Much of Grant Carlson’s time is spent marketing the industrial park for companies engaged in softwood manufacturing, while touting the area’s raw lumber supply and experienced forest products workforce.
“We probably have one of the biggest wood products manufacturing bases in Canada,” says Carlson, economic development officer for the Lake of the Woods Business Incentive Corp. But Kenora considers itself a very economically diversified place with only 35 per cent of its activity being forest-related and the rest devoted to construction and tourism.
The city wants to lure some complementary companies into an industrial park complex assembled in the form of value-added companies, distributors and suppliers around the plant.
Recently the city partnered with the private and public sector to extend services on the industrial properties.
Approximately $15.5 million was spent on expanding services such as fibre optic cable, road resurfacing and new
lighting into two industrially-zoned properties for a combined total of 80 acres, next to the Trus Joist plant and at the airport.
Besides the 80 acres of city-owned land, another 200 acres of privately held land exists nearby that could be developed, says Carlson.
Carlson says there are some interested private player “tire-kickers, but there’s nothing definitive yet.”
Last October, the city received $90,000 from the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund. The funds are earmarked to develop up-to-date marketing material and to launch an advertising campaign at trade shows and in various forest industry trade publications and through the District News, a magazine for the region’s 5,000-strong cottage association.
Since so many Lake of the Woods cottage owners are Winnipeg-based corporate managers and business owners, “we’re trying to put the bug in their ear to move their business here to semi-retire and live in their cabin.”
The municipality also recently completed its funding application in early June for funding to deliver affordable, high-speed Internet service to residents, businesses and institutions in outlying areas around Kenora, not served by DSL or cable-equivalent lines.
The $2-million project will include funding and in-kind contributions from the Connect Ontario Broadband Regional Access (COBRA) program and the federal Broadband for Rural and Northern Development program (BRAND).
“We have consultants working on it right now, and we hope to wrap up by June 6 for the feds. We’ve selected vendors to be partners and to invest their own money so we could flow money through them to build the infrastructure,” Carlson says.
Request for Proposals closed in early June with five companies submitting bids as vendor partners.
Carlson is also awaiting political direction on how the city will use the new tax incentive tool for Northern Ontario since Kenora Mayor Dave Canfield and council wanted to take time to study it.
“It’s a good thing to have, but it’s taken a good chunk of revenue out of the municipal funding stream which is only taxes these days,” says Carlson.
“The way I look at it, we can sell some land get somebody in there, give them a tax break and potentially that might what seals the deal.”
www.city.kenora.on.ca
