By IAN ROSS
Vicki Kurz needs only to read the regional newspapers or listen to laid off mill workers to know what the score is for forestry-dependent communities like Dryden.
With new Domtar ownership in place at the former Weyerhaeuser pulp and paper mill and 500 local forestry jobs lost over the last seven years, Dryden residents know the survival of their largest private employer is only provisional.
But local leaders aren’t waiting around for a corporate board of directors to eventually announce the bad news.
Diversification and investment readiness are the watch words for Kurz, Dryden’s economic development officer.
She’s shepherding a development strategy for the city of 8,200 centred on waterfront recreational opportunities, tourism marketing, mineral exploration and value added opportunities.
Since replacing the retired Jim Dayman last June, Kurz spent much of her first year on the job taking stock of what the community has to offer.
It’s meant carrying out an asset inventory of the area’s labour force, it’s training opportunities and land inventory to update all the vital community data that prospective private investors and site selectors need to know.
Big on her agenda is developing a future ‘training hub’ through a FedNor-funded program called the Northern Forest Innovative Centre. It will catalogue all the area training and delivery providers to forecast the future labour needs for possible value-added forestry operations.
“We can’t rely that the community will be fine, we have to set our destiny,” says Kurz, who previously worked as a home-based business consultant. “We can’t sit back and see what happens to us next.”
Dryden’s waterfront on Wabigoon Lake is a big area of focus for possible new development.
City officials are particularly excited this month about a professional Pro-Am walleye tournament coming to town.
Thanks to the lobbying of Dryden native John Butts, a professional angler, the In-Fisherman Professional Walleye Trail makes its first ever Canadian appearance on Wabigoon, a chain of seven lakes that’s renowned for its monster walleye, pike and muskie.
The Super-Pro Elite Tournament (July 25-27) is expected to create a big cash bump for lodge owners and accommodations people, but it’s also placed an emphasis on finding ways to better market Dryden’s tourism and recreational potential.
The city has 38 acres of lakeside property zoned tourism, recreational and commercial that’s open for development.
Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation and Winnipeg land-use consultants Hilderman Thomas Frank Cram are working with the city on an upcoming two-day community workshop to develop a sustainable waterfront plan.
Kurz says it’s likely a portion of the land will be earmarked for some housing development such as condominiums and time-shares. Some private developers have already approached the city to inquire about such opportunities.
Geography has always played a major role in Dryden’s economic and population stability. Situated on Highway 17, about a three-and-half hour drive from both Thunder Bay and Winnipeg, and at the Highway 502 junction leading south to the U.S. border, it’s already achieved a small measure of diversification as a regional service centre.
From her previous work with the Trans Canada Trail group, Kurz is very keen on extending the national trail system through Dryden by means of a canoe route stretching from Thunder Bay to the Manitoba border.
The surge in global mineral prices has made gold exploration another key area of local interest.
Vault Minerals contacted the City last year expressing interest in exploring some of the 12 patented municipal properties in Van Horne Township.
Ongoing work by other juniors on the nearby Eagle Rock, Plomp Farm and Ghost Lake projects has prompted the City to work with a private geologist to conduct a mining compilation of their lands to determine the mineralization content to date.
“It’s something we’ve never pursued,” says Kurz. Despite a rich local mining history, the area’s baseline mapping dates back 40 years.
Dryden wants to develop a more entrepreneurial mindset with an upcoming symposium – Fueling Innovation: Re-igniting Entrepreneurship – in late September, along with a new economic development commission, which becomes reality in January 2008.
Kurz says forming a commission of community directors allows them to offer incentives to private investors such as waiving development fees and allowing them public funding that is not available to the City of Dryden.
www.dryden.ca
