“We are still in the early stages of our 10-year Economic Action Plan, but we are already seeing the effects of the hard work that our City staff, external partners, and most importantly businesses are doing to grow our economy,” said Tom Mansfield, Acting Deputy City Manager, Urban Planning & Economy. “Reduced wait times, financial support during the pandemic and beyond, and streamlined service delivery all greatly impact the speed at which people can do business in, with and around our city. I’m excited to see what we can continue to accomplish together as this strategy and its actions continue to chart a path to support economic and job growth in Edmonton.”
Why this work is important
Edmonton has experienced considerable growth over the past decade, with a city population that has grown faster than Alberta and Canada. This growth stalled as a result of COVID-19 and the volatile oil and gas industry, and the citizens of Edmonton, despite being incredibly resilient, have felt the challenges that come from the weakening economy.
In order to counter the negative effects of the pandemic, in 2021 alone, the City provided multiple incentives and business relief grants that drove economic investment in the area, including:
- Edmonton Economic Recovery, Business Association Stream grant, which provided funds to the Islamic Family and Social Services Association ($74,000), Black Canadian Women in Action ($37,500) and Grow Women Leaders ($75,000). The grants leveraged $319,340 in private funds.
- 2021 Economic Incentive Construction Grant, which provided 10 agreements worth approximately $19 million, leveraging $551 million in investment in Edmonton’s Downtown.
- Community Revitalization Levies, which provided $93.4 million in building permit value to the CRL areas in 2021.
- Storefront Improvement Program, which provided 12 grants worth $386,556, leveraging $493,634 in private funding for exterior commercial renovations.
- Development Incentive Program, which provided 12 grants worth $279,908, leveraging $7.1 million in private funding for new commercial construction and interior renovations.
- Corner Store Program, which provided 20 grants worth $300,792, leveraging $2.13 million in commercial construction value in mature neighbourhoods.
- The Downtown Vibrancy Strategy grant, which provided $639,570 in support of 15 projects, leveraging an additional $1,114,409 in investment.
What we’re doing
Our teams at the City have been hard at work enhancing service delivery and customer experiences.
Highlights of our focus in this area includes:
- Cut business licence approval time in half (from 20 days to 10 days) when a building permit is not required using a risk-based approach.
- Helped businesses to open sooner by allowing interior demolition work to proceed while awaiting commercial building permit approval.
- Reduced sign permit approval timelines by half since moving online, saving 24,014 days and $440,000 annually for businesses.
- Automated permit reviews for high volume, lower-risk residential projects such as decks and garages, to offer same day permits for qualified projects. Creates efficiency for City staff to focus on complex applications.
- Implemented Remote Video Inspections (RVI) for safety code inspections of occupied construction sites to allow these inspections to continue virtually during the pandemic. Over 11,700 RVIs have been conducted since the implementation in spring 2020.
- Used technology to support Safety Code inspectors to more efficiently complete on-site tasks and introduced route optimization software to reduce driving time.
- Moved over 90 per cent of permit and license applications online and continued enhancement of eServices based on customer feedback.
In addition to the process improvements, we have also been busy streamlining our business expansion and retention services, through:
- Tailoring business supports, including connecting businesses to the right people at the City through the one-on-one support service.
- Providing community programming, including building capacity and access to resources for entrepreneurs from equity-deserving groups through customized workshops for community partners.
- Stewarding innovation by shepherding innovative businesses with a product or service to test in a municipal environment.
- Enabling new investments by working directly with companies, and our partners like Edmonton Global, to provide information that informs decisions, regulatory pathfinding, site selection, and local community connections.
- Providing aftercare to recent investors so that we can support their future growth.
This work is made possible in collaboration with Edmonton Global, Innovate Edmonton, Health Cities, and many other partners who grow Edmonton’s economy and enhance how we do business.
“By focusing our efforts to bring global investment into the Edmonton Metropolitan Region, we will see growth at a regional and city level,” said Malcolm Bruce, Chief Executive Officer, Edmonton Global. “Edmonton Global works with its regional partners to ensure the region has the right tools to attract investment and is investment ready. This initiative is a key outcome of that. This further amplifies our message that the region is thriving and open to investment opportunities in our core sectors. The Edmonton region is a fantastic place to do business - dedicated to supporting corporations at all stages of their growth. We are committed to working together so that we all rise stronger as one region.”
“It’s a complex world today, filled with tough challenges—like the climate emergency, public health, food security, the digital divide, social justice and Reconciliation,” said Catherine Warren, Chief Executive Officer, Innovate Edmonton. “Confronting these challenges together in a growth-minded city like Edmonton requires solutions of many kinds—solutions that we are jointly committed to find, develop and market to the world.”
“We believe success breeds success,” said Reg Joseph, Chief Executive Officer, Health Cities. “Throughout 2021, by partnering with the City of Edmonton, we have made major strides in enabling industry access to health data, accessibility to care through innovation, and created a network for companies to grow other companies. By helping companies scale and through the development of growth-enabling platforms, Health Cities continues to play an important role in leveraging Edmonton’s health sector to drive economic growth.”
We invite members of the public to follow along with the updates of this work going to Executive Committee on April 13 and throughout 2022.
