Richmond Hill economic development - business attraction

NRU
April 19, 2017
By Leah Wong

As Richmond Hill grows and transitions from a suburban to an urban community the town needs
to increase employment opportunities and attract new businesses. To do this council is refocusing the town’s economic development efforts to attract creative and technology-based industries.

In 2010, Richmond Hill council approved the town’s first strategy that looked at the performance of its local economy and the types of jobs and businesses located within the town. While originally intended to be a 10-year plan, last year council directed an update to better reflect the town’s growth and fine-tune the sectors it was targeting.

“As economic conditions change and evolve [in Richmond Hill], the economic development strategy …
needed to be reviewed this term to ensure its relevance and identify opportunities for moving forward,” Ward 5 councillor and Economic Development Task Force chair Godwin Chan said in an email
to NRU.

The town retained MDB Insights-the consultant for the original strategy-to complete the update and make recommendations about opportunities for employment growth. At its meeting last week the Economic Development Task Force recommended council focus the goals of the strategy on supporting innovation, attracting creative industries and technology-based businesses and developing a “confident community identity” for the town.

Richmond Hill is expected to add 40,000 jobs by 2041. With its business parks currently at 82 per cent capacity, the town will need to intensify its business parks and corridors to accommodate this growth. The consultant recommends that the built form for these areas be suited to small businesses as about 85 per cent of Richmond Hill businesses employ 10 or fewer people.

“Richmond Hill has a very small business economy. It’s not being driven by the 200 to 250- plus [employee companies], but rather businesses that will come with 10, 15, 25, maybe 50 [employees],” MDB Insights vice-president consulting Lauren Millier told NRU. “They require a different kind of support and built form.” Millier said these businesses are more likely to want to be tenants than building owners and prefer to be in amenity-rich locations that are serviced by transit.

To attract these businesses, the consultants recommend the creation of policies and incentives to support the redevelopment of existing building stock in the town’s business parks. Millier said there are also opportunities to work with businesses and property owners to identify ways to use existing space differently and allow for more flexible office space and shared amenities.

One of the challenges the town has consistently faced concerns its ability to market itself to potential businesses in comparison to other Greater Toronto Area municipalities. Millier said that in the GTA, cities such as Toronto, Mississauga and Markham tend to have stronger identities to encourage economic development.

“Richmond Hill, although it has performed really well from a population growth
and employment growth perspective, we felt, and the business community there felt, that the community still lacked the identity and sense of place within the GTA,” said Millier.

She added that there are opportunities to use the strength of the existing business community to build
on Richmond Hill’s brand and better position it as a premier business location. These include creating a business ambassador program that encourages local business leaders to identify potential prospects that economic development staff can pursue. To achieve this, Millier said the town needs to dedicate more resources to economic development.

Council is making this a priority and has allocated funding in the 2017 budget to hire an economic development manager. Chan said committing resources to enable the town to improve how it connects with business groups and expand its economic development services will help “existing businesses to … grow, as well as retain them in the town.”

Committee of the Whole will consider the Economic Development Task Force’s recommendations for updating the town’s economic development strategy at its meeting later today.