City attends Shopping Centre conference, discusses vacant land subclasses

Cold Lake visited with many top brands and companies in Whistler at the end of January.

Mayor Craig Copeland billed it as 36 hour speed dating with businesses, a multi-day event in Whistler called the International Council of Shopping Centres conference. 

He said they were asked by some local developers to come to the event, to provide municipal information that could help attract these companies to Cold Lake.

“Everybody’s there, all the big brands that you want to think about, and even the big, huge shopping malls, because you’re talking about across Canada,” said Copeland. 

“It was a really neat event, and we’ll support. If people want to risk money and come into Cold Lake and are already developing, we want to have that relationship with them, and try to be there for them to support, because they’re putting up millions of dollars for development.” 

The event works as a networking hub for brands and developers, and people who want to become franchisees. From big to small, Copeland said Alberta was well represented at the conference, some even with their own booths marketing their communities.

But attending an event like this doesn’t change the municipalities role in commerce.

The City itself isn’t contacting these businesses they come to their community, it’s for developers to do.

“Let them go out and get that network. They’ve been in this game, they know who’s looking to come into your city and the market, and what can the market absorb? So they might throw different brand names at us and say, hey, you know, what do you think?” said Copeland. 

“Look at Taco Bell. They come in and repurposes a building, the old Pizza Hut building, and then Pizza Hut moves into a smaller thing. All that is done behind the scenes that’s not involving mayor and council and CEO. And that’s business doing business.

“The big thing is, you really want to stay out of the way of business. Where we come in, does a does a developer need a another exit off of Highway 28? Okay, does that come with a set of lights, here’s the cost. Do they want a second turn into their parking lot from a main street? So that’s where we enter the picture.”

The City has been encouraging vacant commercial property owners to list their parcels online through MLS.

It dovetails with a recent discussion at city council, since the City doesn’t actually own much land. Most of it is in private hands.

“Eventually, we’re going to have a discussion at council about introducing subclasses in terms of vacant residential, vacant commercial, and here’s the parameters behind that. Then maybe introducing a different mill rate, either positive or more or less. It all depends.”