Welland garners feature in Business View Magazine
Welland’s success is making news across North America thanks to a recent profile in the March issue of Business View Magazine.
The magazine, with 400,000 subscribers, spotlighted the city with a full-colour feature called Welland, Ontario: Bridging the Past, Present, and Future.
It was in the magazine’s city view section that profiles best practices of communities on the grow across Canada and the U.S.
The story reports on how Welland is diversifying its economy to include smaller manufacturing firms such as Welded Tube of Canada, call centres such as Convergys, and food processors such as Northern Gold, the magazine said in a release.
“The most notable addition has been GE,” Dan Degazio, Welland’s director of economic development, said in the article.
“They’re moving to Welland and opening a 500,000-squarefoot facility to employ a minimum of 250 people to start. It’s a $250-million facility on 80 acres near the Welland Canal, a 20-minute drive from the U.S. border.”
With housing development “going through the roof,” Degazio said the city has sold a significant amount of acreage for new housing; some of the most affordable land in southern Ontario.
“We have upwards of 300 acres to the north of the city that’s serviced and ready to go but, under the provincial guidelines, we have to prove our population growth is going to come to that point. Our anticipation is that our population is going to outgrow the suggested number.”
The magazine release said: “This type of story intrigues Business View readers across North America — many of them city planners and managers facing similar challenges with infrastructure and growing populations, and looking for creative solutions from other communities in the same boat.”