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JUNE 2008, Volume
23 Issue 6
Click here to download this story in PDF format
Regional Roundup: Brandon, MB
Bringing home the bacon
Brandon population closes on 50,000 as Maple Leaf
expands into a global powerhouse
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Brandon, Manitoba's second largest city, is attracting workers,
new home-builders and retailers. Low cost
housing and
civic improvements add to the attraction. |
Winnipeg has long cast a shadow over Brandon, so you can imagine the jubilation in Manitoba's second-largest city when a major Canadian corporation selected it over the provincial capital as the recipient of a mega investment.
Maple Leaf Foods has finalized plans to add a second shift to its meat processing plant in Brandon, a $50 million initiative that will boost employment by 400 new positions by next spring and enable it to consolidate all of its fresh pork processing into a single location.
Lynda Kuhn, the Toronto-based company's senior vice-president of communications and consumer affairs, said the investment is the largest capital project in Maple Leaf's meat business.
"We are very much focused on our strategy of creating scale plants that can compete globally," she said, noting five other plants across the country, including one in Winnipeg, have been or will be closed as a result of the Brandon expansion.
Kuhn said the eight-year-old Brandon plant was designed to be a two-shift operation but because it was a green field facility, it required some time to build its markets. She said Brandon was the chosen site for a number of reasons, including its proximity to a supply of high quality hogs.
"It's also a very supportive municipality. We have a very good relationship with the city. [Building our plant there] was a very good decision," she said.
Foreign workers
Nobody is happier about the burgeoning romance than Brandon mayor Dave Burgess. He said the city's population will continue to grow as Maple Leaf scours the globe - in countries such as Columbia, El Salvador, the Ukraine and China - in search of new workers. He said that's causing a "huge" boost in construction activity, particularly in multi-family dwellings, in anticipation of the influx.
Burgess said the arrival of the families of Maple Leaf employees is going to push Brandon's population closer to the magical 50,000 mark. He said projections are calling for two per cent population growth over each of the next four years.
The impact of Maple Leaf's second shift will include spin-off business at gas stations, food outlets, hardware stores, automotive supply providers and truck cleaning companies, the mayor added.
"You see 200 trucks per day coming to the Maple Leaf plant. After the second shift starts, it will be 380 trucks per day with almost the same number leaving with finished product," he said.
Rental boom
The Maple Leaf expansion is having a direct impact on Brandon's housing market, according to Kit Harrison, a broker at Sutton Harrison Realty. He said not only are rental apartments at a premium, but some people are buying houses and renting them out by the room.
"We don't have a rooming house bylaw here. If you want to rent an entire house, it slides under the scope," he said.
Harrison said housing prices are continuing to grow steadily between five and 10 per cent annually and bidding wars aren't uncommon. He said a typical house in Brandon is a three-bedroom 1,000-square-foot bungalow with a garage that sells for about $185,000.
"The residential single-family house sales are very brisk and multiple investment properties are very much in demand. Revenue properties and commercial investment properties are being sought after, too," he said.
Harrison said in his 25 years in the business, he has rarely seen the market as buoyant as it is today.
"I think we're going to run fairly parallel with last year, which was one of the most significant markets we've ever had here. There's no indication that we're going to slow down. Things are only going to get busier," he said.
Downtown plan
Sandy Trudel, Brandon's economic development officer, said reinvigorating the city's downtown is one of her top priorities. Spearheading the effort is a newly minted group called Renaissance Brandon, which is roughly based on Winnipeg's downtown revitalization outfit, CentreVenture.
Trudel said $250,000 of civic money was recently allocated to Renaissance Brandon to kickstart its effort, which include looking at what type of developments to fund, what it wants the seven-block by three-block downtown core to look like, what companies need to be there to drive the development and then targeting those firms to move there. She said the future is as bright as she has seen in it in 12 years in the economic development office.
"I'm not seeing any indicators that the momentum is waning. I believe it will be full power ahead for us. The city is looking very seriously at infrastructure investments. Strong infrastructure is the foundation for us to succeed," she said.
It's not just Maple Leaf's growth that has Burgess and Trudel smiling.
Modern Industrial Structures, which builds transportable housing units, now has 50 employees a year after opening its doors. Shape Foods is expanding its flax crushing plant, and technology company ResQ IT is also in expansion mode. Ashley Furniture recently opened a store in Brandon, a signal that spin-offs of the strong housing market are already taking effect.
IncentivesTrudel said the city doesn't feel the need to dangle any short-term carrots in front of companies that are on its radar. Instead, the business environment itself is the attraction.
"We don't need to be looking at artificial inducements to get people into the economy. Once those wear out, if the business case isn't there, your businesses aren't there," she said.
Burgess said the city is starting to gain some traction with taxation enticements to spur redevelopment of empty buildings. Once a property has been retrofitted, the policy is to tax it at the same level as when it was empty for the next five years. For the following five years, taxes will be at 50 per cent of the assessed value with full taxation kicking in after a decade.
"We've had seven [projects] go forward already. It's really starting to catch interest," he said.
Seedy hotels levelled
Burgess is particularly excited about the city's decision to buy the Beaubier Hotel, a rundown downtown property that was attracting attention for all the wrong reasons. The city gets possession in early May and will promptly demolish the building and begin a $14 million project, which will combine the construction of a municipal recreational facility and the expansion of the neighbouring YMCA.
Burgess said it's important to show downtown businesses that the city is on the same page as they are.
"The YMCA really struggled with the decision whether to stay downtown. They didn't want to be beside the Beaubier. You would see very detrimental sightings outside of that hotel. It wasn't a pleasant atmosphere if you were dropping your wife, mother or kids off [at the Y]," he said.
Burgess said he'd like to see the Brandon Inn meet the same fate, just two blocks away.
"I'm sure those hotels had high standards in the early 1900s but not any more," he said. "We need to pair up municipal and provincial assistance to clear out a detriment to downtown and work with private industry. If you can combine your forces you can do an awful lot," he said.
Burgess said a significant part of the city's pitch to potential residents and companies is Brandon's quality of life, including a crime rate at its lowest level in 30 years.
"The commute times are very favourable. You can get anywhere in the city in eight minutes and you have the amenities of a large city," he said.
– Geoff Kirbyson
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