Agency has line on 650 new jobs
Business: Councillor not convinced that Enterprise Saint John is responsible for attracting new businesses
Published Monday February 21st, 2011
C1Reid Southwick
Telegraph-Journal
SAINT JOHN - The region's economic development agency says it courted officials with five companies last month that may set up operations in the area, with the potential of creating 650 new jobs.
Enterprise chairman Tony Gogan said the investment attraction efforts are routine for the agency, whose work reportedly helped create more than 1,000 full-time jobs in Greater Saint John over the past several years.
"At any point in time, we'll have anywhere from 10 to 25 active files on the business attraction side," Gogan said in interview. "We've got at least two in our project list right now that would be well over 100 employees each," he said.
The Enterprise group released a monthly bulletin for January to prove to area residents and common council that their tax dollars are being spent on improving the region's economy.
City councillor Bill Farren, who has been critical of Enterprise, said he wondered how many of the potential new jobs the agency would be entirely responsible for attracting to the city.
Farren said he realized that Enterprise has been involved with helping companies start up in Saint John, but he wanted to know how many jobs and companies have come to the city as a direct result of the agency's efforts.
The west side councillor said he would use that information to evaluate the group's performance as council decides in the coming months on the future economic development model for the city, which may not involve Enterprise Saint John.
"We need Enterprise Saint John to help these people overcome some of the hurdles (when setting up in the city), but that's not the only job that they are there to do in my mind," Farren said. "They're there to attract other businesses that otherwise do not know what Saint John has to offer."
Enterprise Saint John reported in its bulletin that its officials hosted 18 potential immigrant investors from China, Vietnam and South Korea last month, amounting to almost one meeting every business day. Immigrant investors typically start up or acquire small businesses with fewer than 10 employees, Gogan said.
Enterprise Saint John also administers a small business fund for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, providing startup cash for fledgling firms. Last month, the agency provided five companies with a total of $69,000, including the architectural firm ACRE Collective and the historic restoration and stone carving company Stonecutter's Edge.
Steve Carson, the group's president and CEO, did not identify the much larger companies the agency is trying to lure to the region, but he said Enterprise officials have been courting them for the past eight or nine months.
Carson said it's difficult to know how likely it is that any of those five companies will end up relocating to Saint John. More generally, he said Enterprise deals with two or three dozen promising prospects at any one time; of those, officials would be optimistic that "several" would come to Saint John, Carson said.
According to the Enterprise bulletin, the agency has helped create about 1,000 new jobs with its business attraction efforts. Among the new operations are E.S. Fox's fabrication shop at the Spruce Lake Industrial Park and Dalhousie University's medical education program at Tucker Park, Carson said.
While many people were involved with attracting the medical education program to the city, Carson said an Enterprise staffer was assigned nearly full time to work on that file for two years.
The economic development executive cautioned that about 90 per cent of the new jobs that have been created in the region over the past several years have come from existing businesses expanding. And he said Enterprise officials have had a hand in those efforts, resulting in expansions in the professional services and information technology sectors.
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Good news coming today
Business: Significant funding announcement expected today to aid cruise ship industry
Published Monday February 21st, 2011
C1
MIKE MULLEN
TELEGRAPH-JOURNAL
While Weston stopped short of saying how much the feds will be kicking in, he did say, "The announcement will better position us strategically to handle more cruise ship traffic in the future."
With the trend toward larger cruise ships, port officials have been pressing federal and provincial officials to help fund infrastructure updates that would expand the berthing capacity of the local port so it can attract more cruise ship business.
They held a public meeting with major stakeholders last year and, during the provincial election campaign, Alward said his government would be supportive of such a move.
In an interview printed in Saturday's Telegraph-Journal, new port authority president and CEO Jim Quinn said he was anticipating some good news on that front soon.
"What happens is that, in this deal, it's an $18.6 million venture," he said. "The port will pay half and the other two levels of government will pay 25 per cent each.
"Any discussion I've had with officials of the provincial government have been very, very encouraging and I would say that any discussions with the federal government have been very, very encouraging, and so we're still expecting that we will hear good news from those levels of government in the not-too-distant future."
The proposed renovations would allow two ships of more than 300 metres to dock during the high-traffic days. Port officials have said Pugsley C and Long Wharf terminals need increased berthing capacity, and there are plans to add a new overhead walkway and extended gangway system to Pugsley C.
Right now, strong currents prevent larger vessels from docking.
In Saturday's story, Quinn said the project advanced by the authority is important in that it "will position Saint John in a manner that will allow us to accommodate two of the very largest of cruise ships on any given day, as well as smaller cruise ship."
Weston noted Sunday that accessing capital for port infrastructure was one of the four priorities he campaigned on in 2008. The others were the Saint John Harbour Bridge, safe and clean drinking water and more affordable housing.
"Citizens of Saint John, they all understand how important this (cruise ship) industry has become," he said.
"It started out by accident and has grown to be such an important part of our economy."
Last year, the Port of Saint John exceeded 200,000 passengers in a single year and welcomed its 1.5 millionth cumulative cruise guest with the two millionth predicted to occur in the next two years.
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