The Town of Okotoks has introduced a new group to help support local businesses.

The Okotoks Downtown Business Association will take over the work of groups like the now-defunct Olde Towne Okotoks and the Elma Street business group.

"The end goal was to create a formal, structured downtown business association, and also get the stakeholders to align to work on projects with each other," said Corinne Finnie, a transformation strategist hired by the Town.

By bringing the town's entrepreneurs together, the hope is to stoke collaboration throughout the business community.

Local business owners were invited to a meeting on January 13 to help establish the new association.

"Basically once we all kind of started to build the same understanding of the end goal of building a vibrant business community, it was just a matter of working out the details of how we do that," Finnie said.

She says once the Downtown Business Association establishes its board it can begin to put together strategies for business advancement and a business model for the association.

They'll also work with the town's economic development team on the new River District marketing campaign.

The hope is that the new association will be able to represent businesses from across the Okotoks area.

"We want to have representation from Elma Street, Main Street, and Stockton Avenue, the different areas we're now looking at," Finnie said.

 

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