The warden for Bruce County is able to reflect on a recent trip to Europe.
The county was awarded a sponsorship from the Federal Economic Development department to attend the MIPIM Conference in Cannes, France.
Warden Chris Peabody says that there was a mix of different organizations in attendance, including investors looking for commercial and industrial investment opportunities, as well as different cities from around the world looking for companies to invest in development within their borders.
Peabody says that he and Saugeen Shores Mayor Luke Charbonneau were involved with a lot of networking.
“Mayor Charbonneau and I fanned out throughout the conference and made those connections, and we had more than a dozen people who asked for more information and we have three solid leads.”
One was a European investor who works with data centres, that’s looking to build in North America.
Another was a company based in Quebec that was looking to expand outside of their province and is interested in paying a visit and looking at the four business parks that are currently available in Bruce County.
Peabody was also invited to attend a World Mayors Forum.
He says there were different breakout groups talking about different challenges that each city had.
“I went to the affordable housing one, and there were mayors from big European cities — Budapest, Lisbon, Bologna — and we all had the same issues with the housing file, and that’s a real problem that we’re having, finding housing for the workers, the middle class, and how to build attainable housing. [It’s] definitely missing in the Grey-Bruce area, but [it’s also] a big issue in Europe. So it was amazing that housing and the affordability issues for the middle class are the exact same in Europe as they are here.”
There were around 24,000 people in attendance.
MIPIM stands for Le Marche International des Professionels de L’Immobilier, which translates to “The International Market for Real Estate Professionals.”
