Hope and Optimism comes out of Baylor Focus Firm Study

North Bay Mayor Al McDonald feels a real sense of hope and optimism after looking at some of the recommendations that came out today in Baylor University's final presentation on the Focus Firm Project presented Friday afternoon at Nipissing University.   

“We heard that North Bay has a lot of great things but we still need to do more, so that’s what we need to do as Invest North Bay, as a community of North Bay. It can’t be one person or one organization, it has to be a community altogether, but there’s no question a room of 200 people saw the hope and optimism of a path forward for the city of North Bay, but that path included everyone,” stated McDonald who is also on the Invest North Bay board. 

This is the second phase of the project, in which Baylor students sifted through the data gathered in the project’s first phase. That provided context for the City’s strengths, as well as prospects for growth and improvement based on community feedback gathered from 4,585 unique survey responses.

The detailed one hour presentation touched on various recommendations and made various examples of success stories from different communities across Canada, Germany and the United States, where cities implemented an economic strategy that turned their economy around.  

One recommendation included the construction of a HIVE, which would be a collaborative business hub where various businesses could work together under one large roof.   

“This is kind of our core product that we created here for North Bay as a city, so it’s a hard project that is not easy to implement, but it’s certainly one of these projects where this is going to create job growth in the future,” said Baylor MBA Student Gordie Braun who described the concept which has been used in cities like Mannheim, Germany and Missoula, Montana.  

“I liked it. I thought it was very innovative and something that I believe that the Invest North Bay board will take a look at very seriously moving forward,” Mayor Al McDonald said about the HIVE idea.   

Other recommendations included a focus on development in the downtown core.   

“Yeah, it’s amazing a shift that has happened. I think a few years ago the mind set was you have to have big industry for a town to survive but the research is showing you don’t necessarily need one big industry for a town to survive. You need a thriving downtown, a place where younger individuals and new generation of younger individuals are drawn to where they want to live, work and play. So it’s important for us to invest in our downtown,” stated Project co-lead Timothy Hutchison.     

The students also recommended the city engage with the community by utilizing Town Hall meetings.  

Through examples from other Ontario cities like Kingston and Peterborough, the recommendations included a projection which indicated by following the recommendations the city could see growth within three years, and by year 10, the study projects the city could see a population boom peaking at 75,000 by 2026.   

While the message was exciting, the students stressed that it’s crucial that the city and its people work together, and need to work together, so these recommendations can work moving forward. 

Laurie Wilson, Director of Graduate Business Degree Programs at Baylor explained how valuable the project’s scope was for the MBA students.

“The opportunity to work with a municipality has been an incredible experience for the MBA students at Baylor University,” said Wilson in a news release. 

“This experience enabled students to see how business and public policy are integrally connected. We hope the City of North Bay finds useful discoveries within the students’ research.”

In September 2015, the City of North Bay announced a research partnership with Baylor University that will formulate the basis for a long-term economic development plan for the city.

Baylor University, a top-ranking and internationally-respected American post secondary institution, engaged in a multi-phased study over eight months to distinguish the municipality’s competitive outlook with insight from the community, and propose solutions for the City to remain viable and increasingly successful in the long-term. Phase I of the project was delivered to the community in December 2015, while the second phase was delivered Friday afternoon.

Today’s presentation is available at investinnorthbay.ca under “Baylor Community Presentation” in the Quick Link section of the homepage. 

The slide deck from today’s presentation is now available at: http://www.investinnorthbay.ca/development-corporation/baylor/