City hall selling Guelph abroad

GUELPH — Some travelling salespeople sell vacuum cleaners. Others hawk life insurance. Jim Mairs sells the City of Guelph. A 28-year veteran of the city’s economic development department who specializes in advanced manufacturing, Mairs is one of two city staffers charged with luring corporations to Guelph and convincing them to stay here.

This year, he’s travelled farther afield than ever before — to Phoenix, Anaheim and Munich — representing Guelph for the Ontario Clean Technology Alliance, a province-led effort to promote southwestern Ontario as a cleantech hub.

The approach is working, Mairs said during an interview at City Hall this week, citing three cleantech firms about to relocate or add an office here.

As for the dozens of other company representatives he’s met at trade shows this year, “at least they can say, ‘If we’re thinking of doing something in Ontario, we’ve got a contact, we’ve got a face,’” Mairs said.

Another Guelph business development specialist, Barbara Maly, has been conducting similar ambassadorship to attract agriculture, food processing and biotechnology companies to the city.

Maly recently represented the two-year-old Grow Guelph initiative, a partnership with the University of Guelph, at a food expo in New Orleans and the World Congress on Industrial Biotechnology and Bioprocessing in Toronto. Grow Guelph also represents the city in the newly created Ontario Food Cluster.

In an interview, Maly said more investment by food companies will mean more jobs, lower taxes and increased quality of life through corporate donations and sponsorships.

Three major food companies have recently expressed interest in moving to or expanding within Guelph, she said.

“This sector is recession-proof,” Maly said, referring to the agri-food industry. “Everyone needs to eat.”

Cleantech and agri-food are identified as priority sectors in Prosperity 2020, the department of economic development and tourism’s guiding document.

Mairs said that compared to other jurisdictions in the Ontario cleantech alliance such as Toronto, Waterloo Region, Hamilton and Windsor-Essex, Guelph has a lot to offer, including 500 acres of graded commercial land, a large pool of skilled manufacturing labour and a municipality with a stated commitment to alternative energy.

“Different communities have different strengths,” he said, adding that all 10 partners in the alliance have as additional selling points Ontario’s low corporate tax rates, high feed-in tariff rates and proximity to lucrative U.S. markets.

Horton and Hub City introduce mechanically driven variable-speed ...

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