The Town of Morris is taking its economic development efforts to the next level.
In 2019, Council opened its industrial park. Then in early 2023, the Town joined the municipalities of Montcalm and Emerson-Franklin in forming a grassroots group aimed at furthering the vision of creating industrial and commercial opportunities along Highway 75, forming a mid-Canada trade corridor starting at the Emerson-Pembina Port of Entry and connecting to CentrePort Canada, Northern Gateway Rail, and southcentral communities into an integrated economic artery for Manitoba. By the end of the year, the group snagged a provincial grant through the Government of Manitoba's Municipal Service Delivery Program to pay for a regional planning district evaluation, exploring the formalization of the PTH 75 Caucus.
Now, Council has launched a one-stop shop for potential developers or businesses that want to research investing in the community. It's a fully functional web portal, investmorris.ca, dedicated to sharing all of the relevant information they would want to know.
Mayor Scott Crick says Council has spent several years laying the groundwork for this.
"Since being elected, we've had a number of initiatives and we've worked at maintaining our level of taxes without increasing them. We've developed an industrial park and we're continuing to change bylaws and other government documents that will set up or make it easy for businesses to open in Morris. That includes our partnership with Emerson-Franklin and Montcalm in terms of developing the Southern Manitoba trade corridor," he explained. "Now, the next step was how could we go out and market this, whether it's internally to people within the community who might have business ideas or external businesspeople that might be looking at opening up a facility in Southern Manitoba."
The portal includes a community profile that lists information on local demographics and the workforce, amenities and outlines some sectors that would be ideally suited for establishing business in Morris.
"For example, I know one that features prominently is transportation and logistics," highlighted Crick. "That's the type of business we're ideally suited for when we consider we're at the junction of two Provincial Trunk highways, and we also now have Highway 75 being flood-proofed to I-29 levels. So, great opportunities for those types of businesses."
Also important, noted Crick, is an interactive section where a prospective business or prospective residential developer can see what parcels of land are available within the community and use that as a basis on which to make inquiries.
The Mayor believes the potential for economic development in his community, and along the trade corridor, is huge.
"Yes, we are very confident in the appetite of businesses to come here, especially as we're seeing other jurisdictions, especially the City of Winnipeg, becoming more difficult for developers to deal with," said Crick. "They're also running out of space, and we have excellent opportunities in southern Manitoba, not just in Morris, but through the rest of the trade corridor. Unfortunately, just an area that we haven't done enough development in marketing over the past number of years and by correcting that now, we're already seeing some very good interest."