City of Thunder Bay opens 'One Stop Development Shop'

Whether it's for a backyard deck or a 12-storey building, the City of Thunder Bay hopes a new initiative will simplify the process for Thunder Bay residents, and make development easier.

The city officially opened its new Build Thunder Bay One Stop Development Shop on Wednesday, on the second floor of the Victoriaville Civic Centre (in the former Development Services office).

Joel Depeuter, the city's director of development services, said the new office has been in the works for several months.

"Development can be very complicated," he said. "Even projects that are seemingly simple for a homeowner could be very complicated to determine where to start, what to do, how to complete the project."

"Here at the One Stop Development Shop ... we're here to help and to walk people through their project."

In addition, a number of other services are available through the office, including:

• Driveway permits.
• Lot grading and drainage.
• Sewer and water connections or disconnections.
• Street and sidewalk closures for construction.
• Heritage Advisory Committee Approvals.

City Manager John Collin said one of his previous roles was with a municipality that had a similar office.

"We created it there," he said. "I know it can make a difference, so it's wonderful that it's now up and running."

The services will be for projects that range in scale from individual home projects to larger housing developments.

Collin also noted that there will be "hiccups along the way," but he said the city will adjust. 

"We're not talking about circumventing laws or breaking regulations or ignoring requirements. But there are easy ways to get through that morass of requirements, and there are tough ways," he said. "We're going to try to make it as easy as possible for everybody."

This is one of a few growth-related initiatives the city has taken on since Collin took over the role of city manager.

In a presentation to city council last fall, Collin said Thunder Bay's population only grew 1.3 per cent between 2016 and 2021, according to census data.

The Ontario average for that period was 5.8 per cent.

In addition, the city's tax base grew .63 per cent on average over the last 10 years, and .44 per cent during the last four years.

In the same address, Collin announced his plans to reorganize city administration and create a "growth department," and develop a new growth plan.

On Tuesday, Collin said he was happy with how the various efforts to increase growth are progressing.

"The thing I'm the happiest about is people seem to be understanding of what we want to try to achieve and why we want to achieve it," he said. "They're buying in. That's very positive. The rest of it will flow."

"But I caution everybody when we talk about growth, growth doesn't happen overnight," Collin said. "There's no magic wand we can wave and all of a sudden we get the growth rate that we need. This is going to be years in the making, but if we can grow a little bit more every year, then every year have a little bit more revenue that we could feed back into the community, for the benefit of the community, and that's what this is all about."