Olympic No snaps city out of investment dream
The death of the proposed Olympic bid that proponents had touted as Calgary’s best chance to create jobs and spur diversification has some Calgarians asking what else — if anything — can lift this city out of its economic doldrums.
With unemployment stubbornly stuck above eight per cent and a quarter of the office space downtown sitting empty, proponents of the 2026 bid believed the Games would be a much-needed shot in the arm for the local economy.
Mary Moran, the head of Calgary Economic Development who took a leave from her job to lead the Olympic bid corporation, repeatedly stated before Tuesday ’s plebiscite that the Games were the city’s “best opportunity” to attract investment dollars, create jobs and rebrand itself on the global stage.
Steve Allan, executive chair of Calgary Economic Development — which also mounted a failed bid for Amazon HQ2 last year — mourned the loss of the Olympic opportunity Wednesday. He said there is nothing else on the table for Calgary that would provide a $4.4-billion injection from private or public sources, or attracts billions of dollars’ worth of international media exposure.
“What is really troublesome is other people have been telling us, ‘No — no pipelines, no this, no that’ — and now we have decided to say No to ourselves,” Allan said. “We are mired in negativity.”
In the absence of an Olympic bid, Allan said CED will continue to work on the economic strategy it unveiled in October. That strategy aims to make Calgary the “city of choice in Canada for the world’s best entrepreneurs” and identifies seven industries where Calgary has a competitive advantage — including energy, agribusiness, transportation and logistics, tourism, creative industries, life sciences and health, and financial services.
“There are actually lots of really cool, exciting things happening in Calgary,” Allan said, adding CED has a $100-million fund designed to attract and support private and public sector investments in the economy and also continues its efforts to attract and retain companies and head offices. But while it has seen successes on that front — Allan said CED has worked with at least 75 companies this year that have made the decision to come to Calgary or to stay in Calgary — there is no silver bullet for the city’s economic woes.
“There is no big plan. It’s just going to be slogging in the trenches,” he said. “We’re gaining traction, but we’ve got over 12 million square feet of vacant office space and at this rate it’s going to take a long time to fill it up.”
Tourism Calgary CEO Cindy Ady said she believes the Olympic opportunity was one-of-a-kind in terms of its ability to sell the city on the world stage.
But she said her industry is a “resilient group” and will turn its attention to other events that can offer Calgary exposure, including the Canadian Country Music Awards and the Grey Cup, both of which are being hosted here in 2019.
“We have others that we are working on, with council and other levels of government, that we also think are quite exciting,” Ady said. “We’re going to be moving forward some other ideas that we think would be great for Calgary.”
The Olympic Games would have offered a boost to Calgary’s burgeoning tech sector, making it easier for companies to make international contacts and attract talent and investment, said Cynthia van Sundert.
But van Sundert — who serves as executive director of the A100, a community of Alberta tech founders and executives — takes issue with the idea that the Games were Calgary’s best chance.
“Someone who tells me this is the only thing we’ve got bothers me,” she said. “We’ve got a lot more going on in this city.”
However, van Sundert said true economic diversification takes decades, while the Amazon bid and the Olympic plan offered the hope ofaquickfix.
“It’s the need for instant gratification that all humans have,” she said. “Well, we’re going to need a little grit. We need to get that entrepreneurial thinking, and accept that there are going to be ups and downs, that you get knocked down but you get up and start swinging again.”
Members of the provincial and federal governments were quick to assure Calgarians on Wednesday that abandoning the Olympic bid doesn’t mean the city is out of options.
“This was one of the many ways in which we were looking to diversify our economy of the city but certainly not the only one, and I’m sure that in the coming days there will be many other ideas,” said Alberta Tourism Minister Ricardo Miranda.
Federal Natural Resources Minister Amarjeet Sohi said while he believes the Olympic Games could have had the potential to “transform our communities,” the government is open to working with Calgary on other projects too.
On Tuesday night, Mayor Naheed Nenshi said he rejects the notion that the plebiscite verdict means Calgary has become a “can’t do” city, though he added it’s obvious Calgarians believe the Olympics were not the right project at this time.
“Does that mean we’re going to sit on our laurels? Does that mean we’re going to sit back and hope that everything gets better? Of course not.”