Economic Road Map

Leveraging Newmarket’s Urbanization

NRU
Sept. 28, 2016
By Leah Wong

The Town of Newmarket is growing up. Recognizing a need to add new employment opportunities as residential development continues, the town has developed a new strategy to guide economic development as it intensifies.

On Monday General Committee endorsed a four-year economic development strategy that seeks to leverage innovation, urbanization and collaboration to attract new businesses and workers to Newmarket. The strategy aims to align economic development and planning to ensure the town is adding employment as its population grows.

“We are urbanizing here,” Ward 4 councillor Tom Hempen told committee. “I am looking forward to seeing Newmarket offer different housing options along Yonge [Street] and Davis [Drive] and creating some economic development [to encourage] innovative industries to come to our community.”

The strategy sets timed goals for economic development and outlines the actions and anticipated investments required to achieve these goals. At this time there are no requests for new town resources.

Recognizing the importance of innovation, the strategy identifies the need to bring high-speed broadband infrastructure to Newmarket. It also targets partnerships with local incubators such as Southlake Regional Health Centre’s CreateIT Now health innovation incubator and digital innovation hub NewMakeIt.

“We need to think about new ways to do things,” Newmarket Economic Development Advisory Committee chair Jim Gragtmans told committee. “If we don’t evolve we run the danger of being irrelevant.”

The advisory committee created its first economic development strategy in 2010. Gragtmans said that a lot has changed in Newmarket in that time and now change is happening more rapidly. As a result, the committee decided that it was time to refresh its strategy with a focus on aligning it with other council priorities.

Regional councillor John Taylor told committee that its focus on urbanization is what will make Newmarket’s economic development strategy stand out from the eff orts of other municipalities.

“There’s a number of economic development plans that talk about collaboration and innovation
but now many talk about [urbanization],” he said. By becoming more urbanized Taylor suggested Newmarket will become a community that younger innovators and start-up companies want to call home.

Gragtmans said that Newmarket has adopted a bold vision with its goal to become a Canadian
leader in “suburban urbanization.” To achieve this the strategy identifies ways to align planning and economic development.

Newmarket economic development officer Chris Kallio noted that the town’s planning staff is already considering ways to encourage further intensification along its corridors through its review of the zoning by-law and parking requirements.

These initiatives work towards the goal of supporting the development of liveable, walkable corridor communities.

Using a results-based accountability framework to gauge economic growth will enable the town to monitor progress. Gragtmans said this is every bit as important as specific initiatives. In consultation with the advisory committee, town staff will determine the type of data that should be collected to monitor its economic development efforts.

The town is planning to host an inaugural economic development congress before the end of the year. This will offer an opportunity to engage stakeholders and community groups in collaborative initiatives identified in the strategy.