By IAN ROSS
Steve Demmings is sizing up Thunder Bay and he’s excited by its potential.
The city’s new face of economic development spent most of April shaking hands, making presentations, gathering ideas and sampling the community’s mood while, formulating the shape of Thunder Bay’s future strategic direction.
Demmings was named founding CEO of the fledgling Thunder Bay Community Economic Development Commission (TBCEDC) in March.
The Winnipeg native is being lauded by the search committee as an economic development executive with a strong private and government expertise and a knack for building partnerships.
He was selected from a field of eight candidates in a nation-wide hunt by one of Canada’s leading executive search firms, Ray & Berndtson.
Demmings was president of Site Selection Canada, his consulting company offering site selection services to technology companies seeking to expand in Canada.
Prior to that, Demmings held executive vice president positions at Access Manitoba and the Manitoba Call Centre Team, a successful Winnipeg-based public-private corporation focused on the growth of the call centre industry.
Upon leaving that initiative in 2001, the Manitoba call centre industry workforce numbered more than 12,000 employees.
Demmings says he’s had extensive experience dealing with economic development officers across Canada, giving him a nation-wide perspective on how organizations function.
From his consultancy practice, he developed a network of associates in knowledge-based business.
“When I needed to develop partnerships or relationships, it was an e-mail or phone call away. It was based on networking.”
Early in the selection process, TBCEDC chairman Ed Schmidtke said it was important to hire someone with a proven track record in business recruitment and retention.
Schmidtke says Demmings’ work certainly fits the bill.
“One of the things we liked about Steve was his collaborative approach,” says Schmidtke.
Demmings says it was an easy decision to place roots in Thunder Bay.
He is familiar with the city as his wife, Barbara, was raised in Thunder Bay, and the couple has vacationed in the area for more than a dozen years.
Demmings says it was clear from the City of Thunder Bay’s advisement in the Globe and Mail, local decision makers were sending a “strong signal” to aggressively pursue and retain an outside consultant.
The commission was created last summer by the City of Thunder Bay as an arm’s length entity, free from any political interference.
Schmidtke was hoping that was enough incentive to attract some top-notch talent.
Although Demmings will report to a nine-member commission, he will have much latitude and a clean slate to structure the development entity from scratch, make all operational decisions and develop a strategic approach.
“It’s going to be our desire to give lots of autonomy to him to do those things because he is the hired professional,” says Schmidtke. “The details of that governance is something we plan to go through as soon as he’s got a feel for the community and the job at hand.”
The commission includes six members from the business and labour community along with three politicians including Mayor Lynn Peterson and two councillors.
Peterson said last fall it was important the commission be a “project-driven, business-lead and a community-supported” organization.
Those elements were missing in previous economic development work especially when the waterfront redevelopment issue six years ago became highly politicized with plenty of council intervention.
Demmings says he’s excited and impressed by the local commitment to change, by potential new start-up businesses and home-grown expertise and advances in the medical and biotechnology research fields.
While northwestern Ontario’s forestry industry is floundering, Demmings says mill closures need to be viewed from a national perspective. More than 100 pulp mills have closed across Canada in the last half dozen years and other industrial sectors including automotive and manufacturing are enduring hard times.
“Thunder Bay is not unique,” says Demmings mentioning mill towns like Rimouski, Que.; Bathurst, N.B.; and Corner Brook, N.S. “It is a national issue,” requiring collaborations at all levels of government to create greater industry efficiencies and build more spinoff business.
After scanning the local economy, Demmings says Thunder Bay’s obvious advantage is it’s location in the geographic centre of Canada.
A burgeoning global economy relying heavily on reliable logistical and supply chain routes leaves many opportunities for Thunder Bay to exploit with its rail access to major carriers, deep water port and with its abundant infrastructure at Ontario’s third busiest airport.
“There’s a very strong logistics advantage and we haven’t talked about the (mining) service potential to the North.
I think it’s a very exciting time to be in this business.”
