Over 150 business and government leaders are meeting Thursday in Calgary to discuss a new plan to help the city get out of the economic downturn.
The Downtown Economic Summit will be looking at the sky-high vacancy rate in the city and how to address all sorts of concerns.
Councillors Druh Farrell and Evan Woolley will be attending the meeting, along with a number of business leaders including Scott Hutcheson, the executive chairman of Aspen Properties, Tom Murphy, the former mayor of Pittsburgh, and Mary Moran, president and CEO of Calgary Economic Development.
Grant Ervin, the chief resilience officer of the City of Pittsburgh, and Michael Brown, president and CEO of Calgary Municipal Land Corporation will also be in attendance.
The summit comes after news from ATB Financial predicting an end to the downturn taking place later this year.
The group says modest growth is expected in 2017, but the city wants to help out businesses that will be taking a long time to recover.
The ATB report says that the unemployment rate will still remain high, around eight or nine percent, and the commercial vacancy rate shows 30 percent of downtown office spaces are still empty.
The outlook for oil does have good news though, with prices per barrel staying between $50 and $60 through the year.
ATB’s Chief Economist Todd Hirsch said on Wednesday that the province is heading in the right direction, but it will take some time before things really turn around.
“The metaphor I like is we all remember the forest fire in Fort McMurray. That fire burned for days and weeks and when the fire was finally extinguished, the last flame was out, that was a day of celebration but it does not mean that Fort McMurray went back to life as normal. That’s when rebuilding starts to happen, but it’s still a good day when those flames are out.”
Hirsch says the province is expected to see a GDP growth of 2.2 percent this year and 2.3 percent in 2018.
The summit will take place on Thursday at the TELUS Convention Centre.
