Taking Stock: North Coast Business Scene -- January 2019

A brand new year arrived for the city's commercial sector and as seems to be the case each year, the early weeks of January delivered only a few newsworthy notes, though in a positive trend from past years, there was no indication of any post Christmas closures to make note of to frame the start of 2019.

For the most part the January review examines some of the local government work on commercial interests, from retail cannabis applications to potential business improvement grants.

Notes from the Chamber and the Prince Rupert offices of CityWest and Northern Savings also contributed to the new flow for the thirty one days of January.

Those themes and many others, can be be found as part of our review of the Commercial and economic scene in the region for the last month below:

January

The City's cannabis regulation roll out continued to attract attention, as a would be proponent of a commercial production operation questions the city's focus on retail operations, noting how their delay in approving for commercial production facilities was keeping revenues and job creation out of the city.

This month found Prince Rupert based CityWest beginning its exploratory work for a fibre link for Ketchikan, with the Northwest communication company looking to help connect the Alaska community to the continental fibre optic backbone that passes through Prince Rupert.

The Northwest company also introduced a new feature to their communication stream, with a new blog posted to the CityWest website called the North Route, which updates customers and Northwest residents on technical and programming notes.

The Prince Rupert and District Chamber of Commerce released the finalists in the annual Business Excellence Awards, with voting set to start in February towards determining the winners, all of the nominated businesses and services will be honoured at the March 2nd Awards Gala at the Lester Centre of the Arts.

The Chamber has also been helpful in keeping local businesses in the hospitality industry up to speed on the City of Prince Rupert water issues, providing guidelines from Northern Health for local businesses to review, even as the Notification status was lowered to that of a Water Quality Notice.

An opportunity for local businesses to dress up their facades may soon be available, as the city of Prince Rupert outlined its plans to access funding for a Businesses facade grant program.

Northern Savings outlined a new program it has taken on across the Northwest, with the financial services organization achieving Certified B corporation status.

The dangers found in the commercial sector were highlighted by another armed robbery at a local convenience store in mid January.

The first ten days of the year found the City of Prince Rupert seeking feedback on a proposed retail cannabis location, with the old Five Corners Sears location identified as the site of an application for business. We first outlined the notes on the proposed cannabis outlet here.

Some of the city's local dining establishments brought the popular Dine Out Prince Rupert program back for the new year, with the Dining program running through January.

You can keep up to date on the ebb and flow of the Prince Rupert commercial scene through our Taking Stock Archive for 2019. 

More notes on the commercial sector across the Northwest in 2018 can also be found from our from our archive page here. 

We imagine we probably have missed a few here or there, so if you know of a business having opened, or seen the Going out of business sign appear somewhere in the area, drop us a line at our email account of northcoastreviewpr@yahoo.ca

Or send us a short message through our twitter feed of @CharlesHays

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