Neepawa’s Economic Development Officer Marilyn Crewe, like many people in her position, didn’t end up in economic development through specific intent but instead took a roundtable journey to get there. Hers was through food service management and community futures before landing in Neepawa eight years ago. The skillset for an economic development officer, which includes data analysis alongside tourism and grantwriting alongside land development, is broad enough to appeal to people from a wide variety of backgrounds.

Business development is the broadest definition of the role, but that scales all the way down to solo entrepreneurs and all the way up to large corporations. Some people will come to her looking for available land, data on the town, or help with starting a business, and other times she will be working on attracting investment in the community. Because investors are looking for information on things like available workforce, storefronts to lease, and water and sewage capacity, keeping abreast of all of those things becomes part of the role.

In the census data released mid-February, Neepawa saw a 23% increase in population over the past five years, which amounts to over a thousand new residents. The community is now well over 5,000 people, and because the pandemic had a significant impact on immigration, the main force behind Neepawa’s population growth, Crewe expects we’ll see a spike over the next year or two as the families of newer temporary foreign workers and permanent residents are finally able to come to Canada.

It’s not just the raw numbers that are important, though. Combining the new information with the 27% increase in population Neepawa saw on the last census, the town can now demonstrate sustained growth, which is an appealing factor in itself for investors on top of the available workforce it presents.

Two additional large businesses - a 60-bed hospital and Best Western hotel - are already on the slate for construction over the next few years. Each of those, Crewe says, will contribute to spawning support businesses, both those directly related to healthcare such as diagnostics and senior services as well as businesses aimed towards new residents or short-term visitors such as food service and retail.

Specifically with relation to the hospital, Crewe also makes the connection to post-secondary institutions now finding the location valuable for programs such as LPN training in order to make use of the locally-available workforce. This is particularly true now that the pandemic has increased the overall comfort level with remote learning.

It’s the interconnectedness of all these moving parts that makes Crewe’s role at the town so challenging but also so exciting.