Jasper’s development approval process was rated poor or very poor by more than half of the businesses interviewed for Jasper’s recently completed Business Visitation Study.
The study was compiled by Community Futures West Yellowhead and included results from 138 businesses owners or operators, who voluntarily gave feedback.
The preliminary results were presented to council Oct. 21, in time for Small Business Week, and showed that a large number of businesses are unhappy with the development approval process and referred to it as a reason not to expand or renovate their businesses.
According to Morgan Roberts, business visitation coordinator, most businesses said they had considered renovations, but had decided against it because of things like “planning and zoning guidelines, municipal government regulations, high storefront costs, Parks Canada regulations, and a shortage of adequate housing for employees.”
Business owners also rated staff housing as poor—“with at least a half dozen comments indicating there should be a very poor category for that question.”
Also rated poor was access to fuel.
On the positive side, most surveyed business owners rated Internet and telephone services as good, water and sewer services as average to good and beautification initiatives as good.
The local labour pool was rated average to fair.
Community Futures West Yellowhead will release concrete statistics by mid-November, along with its recommendations as to how the municipality and Parks Canada can move forward in the future.
The study looked at all of the industries within the community, and included a 10 per cent sampling of the home accommodations—as there are more than 200. It based its interviews on the municipality’s list of business licenses, of which there are more than 500.
Roberts noted that, amongst that 500, there are a number of businesses that don’t conduct their day-to-day operations within the town—like the contractors working on the school or the library and cultural centre—so those businesses weren’t included. Rather, the majority of businesses interviewed were locally owned and operated.
The provincially funded study had Roberts sit down with business owners to ask a list of questions that were drafted in collaboration with the municipality, the Jasper Park Chamber of Commerce and the Jasper Partnership.
“So essentially what we did was we looked at the important topics to municipality and the other partners who wanted to know about the business community, and we divided it up into six distinct sections.”
Those sections include everything from the type of business it is to what its future plans are and what it needs to succeed.
The result will be a study that provides the community with a document outlining the pros and cons of operating a business in Jasper and recommendations as to how to improve the current situation.
“Our intention with this study is that Community Futures wouldn’t own it,” said Nancy Robbins, general manager of Community Futures West Yellowhead. “It would be a public document. It would belong to the business community of Jasper.”
The document will be available to anyone who’s interested in November.
Nicole Veerman
[email protected]
