THUNDER BAY – Businesses in the city’s downtown areas will be eligible for a subsidy of up to $25,000 for development and revitalization projects.
Thunder Bay city council on Monday night unanimously voted in favour of the $100,000 Strategic Core Areas Community Improvement Plan Financial Assistance Program, an incentive initiative for establishments in both the north and south cores as well as the Westfort business area and along Simpson Street.
The program would provide businesses with a grant that would cover the costs of the planning building permit application fees, as well as five per cent of the construction cost with a cap of $25,000 per property.
City director of planning services Leslie McEachern said the funds available in the program will only be available to businesses undertaking work that would require permits.
The previous program that had been introduced in the late 1990s offered smaller subsidies and included a separate planning and building fee grant and construction grant, but will now be rolled into one package.
“What we’re looking at doing now is giving what you would have gotten over 10 years but in a lump sum up front,” McEachern said. “That’s something that business owners indicated would be more helpful to them, having that money when they’re incurring a lot of costs at the outset of their development project.”
The report before council calculated that the $100,000 would cover a grant in the full eligible amount for every property undergoing development or redevelopment based on the level of activity over the last five years.
Mark Smith, the city’s general manager of development and emergency services, said the new program has meaningful improvements over the previous offerings but cautioned council there is no way to truly measure effectiveness.
“What we can’t say is what would happen if we didn’t offer this subsidy. Would this development move forward anyway? There’s no way of knowing,” Smith said.
“The information that is out there and the studies that have been done suggest that actually the degree this sort of thing incentivizes development is somewhat suspect and questionable. Anecdotal evidence would suggest people certainly like to receive the subsidy but whether or not it’s impactful in terms of driving more development than would otherwise happen, the data is sketchy at best.”
Coun. Andrew Foulds said the city’s downtown business areas are making a comeback.
“I think we collectively know how important downtowns are and those downtowns aren’t just the BIA areas,” Foulds said. “Downtowns matter and regardless of all the empirical evidence, programs like this certainly encourage development, redevelopment and revitalization.”
