The town of Smithers is looking to gather information from business owners about challenges and opportunities for growth with the idea to strengthen communications between the town and the local business community.
On Monday, June 26, members of town staff, council, the RCMP and other organizations, such as Work BC visited business across various industries.
“The business walk is to get a pulse on the business community,” said Town of Smithers economic development officer Will George. “We’ve had a smaller business walk in 2015 and 2021, focused on a few different sections of town. But this is really to do a canvass all across the community.
“So we have some groups that are going out to the industrial part, some groups that are going downtown, highway, commercial, everything like that. And it’s to understand some of the challenges and opportunities that [the] Town of Smithers and local business support organizations can assist [with].”
George said this is the largest survey of the businesses in town to date.
“This is the largest one that I believe we’re going to see across the province,” he added. “We have around 500 active businesses in the community, we have around 350 that are on our list [to visit.] So the percentages that we’re going to be covering will be quite a bit.
“And you know, we see Abbotsford and Mission, they cover a couple 100 out of their probably close to 800 or 1,000 businesses.
“So we’ll be getting a much larger sample size, which is the goal for our projects.”
Students from Coast Mountain College assisted in the project. Twenty-one business administration students were paired up with mentors to conduct the survey and gather information. They also helped prepare for the walk around town.
George said not only is it providing hands-on experience for the students but also helping them to network within the community.
The information gathered from the survey and from discussions with business owners will be compiled into a report that will be coming out at the end of August.
“We’re going to be compiling all this information into a final report, as well as customizing particular programs that meet the needs of our business community,” said George.
“So if we hear that there’s a particular bylaw that is really causing grief for 50 per cent of our business owners, then we will really prioritize time, staff and resources to look at is that something that we can and should be changing, as well as developing new programs.”
Any businesses that did not get visited and would like to fill out the survey can find it on the Town of Smithers’ website. It will be open until July 7.
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