Business retention in Revelstoke

The Business Retention and Expansion project aims to support and assist local businesses

1 of 2Mark Rossi is conducting surveys among Revelstoke's business owners as part of the Business Retention & Expansion program. — Photo courtesy Mark Rossi

2 of 2Revelstoke's steering committee for the Business Retention & Expansion program: (L to R) Kevin Dorrius (Community Futures) Judy Goodman (Chamber of Commerce) Alan Mason (City of Revelstoke) and Mark Rossi (BRE Research Coordinator) — Photo courtesy Mark Rossi

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In mid-January 2015, a co-op student from UBC Okanagan started a new job in Revelstoke, B.C. Mark Rossi has been hired to survey Revelstoke business owners as part of an effort called the Business Retention and Expansion (BRE) project.

A press release circulated among Revelstoke media earlier this year said, “The Revelstoke Chamber of Commerce, Community Futures Revelstoke and the City of Revelstoke are spearheading a community economic development project ... The Business Retention and Expansion project is designed to stimulate economic development and growth by assisting existing businesses.”

Joining a trend

Revelstoke is not the first community in southeastern B.C. to implement this project. The program findings are being applied successfully in Golden, Kimberley, Sparwood, Nakusp and the Slocan Valley, and Kaslo is running the program parallel with Revelstoke.

“The kick-start came from Columbia Basin Trust and Selkirk College’s Rural Development Institute (RDI),” Rossi said. “The RDI tries to identify the needs, concerns and opportunities that exist in the local business environment and within individual businesses. It gives a good projection for the future because it focuses on business retention and expansion. A lot of the questions on the survey ask businesses to look forward three to five years and talk about their direction, training requirements, possibilities for future employment—any issues that they have as they move forward.”

With the implementation of this program, Revelstoke is demonstrating its commitment and appreciation for existing businesses as well as trying to attract new ones, and Rossi is finding that business people are excited to constructively share information about the challenges they’re facing.

Covering all the bases

The survey has six sections—general, labour, business and equipment, facility and environment, government services and company assessment—and six main categories of business being surveyed: food and accommodation, retail, entertainment, professional services, transportation/forestry/construction and miscellaneous.

“We’re also targeting a few not-for-profits, the ones with employees,” Rossi said. “I’m meeting a lot of cool people and getting some really good information. I can already see some trends emerging and am beginning to identify some of the barriers.”

Rossi anticipates that he will have the surveys done and the data entered by the end of April, and he hopes that a report from the team at Selkirk College and the RDI will be complete some time in June. 

Once the report is available, he said, “We’ll inform the business owners and then plan some action to address the issues we’ve identified—that’s the whole point of doing the survey.”