New partnership launched to attract investment and a diversified workforce to the Kootenays

The Imagine Kootenay website focuses on 3 pillars of information: working, investing and living in the Kootenays.

Invest Kootenay and Work West Kootenay have joined forces to create one dynamic new platform to showcase the Kootenays: Imagine Kootenay. — Photo courtesy Imagine Kootenay

Invest Kootenay and Work West Kootenay have joined forces to create one dynamic new platform to showcase the Kootenays: Imagine Kootenay. Imagine Kootenay (IK) focuses on highlighting the region as a great place to work, and excellent area to invest and an amazing place to live.

“For the past 10 years, Invest Kootenay’s main focus was to promote businesses for sale and investment opportunities in the region, as well as highlighting the advantages of the Kootenay lifestyle. Over the years, we have also seen the need to support workforce and talent attraction activities,” explained Imagine Kootenay’s Program Manager, Jessica Fairhart. “Through this new partnership we have expanded our mandate to support working, living and investment attraction activities throughout the Kootenay region”.

Imagine Kootenay’s new website launched in January 2016 focuses on three pillars:

• Imagine Working: Showcasing samples of the diverse employment opportunities and sectors in the region, and providing links to job boards in partner communities;
• Imagine Investing: Free service for opportunity holders to post businesses for sale or market new opportunities with over 1800 registered investors;
• Imagine Living: features lifestyle information and connections to individual communities.

Prior to the new partnership, Invest Kootenay had a successful 10-year history of connecting investors and opportunities in the region via its online directory of businesses for sale in the region and had grown to include 12 partnership communities. 

Work West Kootenay (WWK) was a successful workforce recruitment initiative from the Lower Columbia Initiatives Corporation focused on promoting the benefits of living in working in Trail, Rossland & Area. The new partnership means that the successful WWK program has been amalgamated into all 12 IK partner communities.

Speaking about the formation of the new organization, Terry Van Horn, Economic Development Officer at the Lower Columbia Initiatives Corporation and steering committee member said; “All of the member communities within Invest Kootenay and Work West Kootenay are delighted with the formation of Imagine Kootenay. 

“The objectives of both organizations were so closely linked that joining forces made a lot of sense. “Imagine Kootenay can now leverage the combined knowledge, momentum and networks of both previous programs to best promote the opportunities to invest, work and live in the Kootenays”.

Imagine Kootenay is now working to build on the momentum of the two programs through a marketing strategy that aims to promote investment and labour market opportunities in the region.

To find out more about the initiative and opportunities available in the Kootenays, please visit imaginekootenay.com