The Charlottetown Area Development Corporation (CADC) is the lead organization responsible for economic growth in the Greater Charlottetown area. This organization works in partnership with the Province of PEI and the city of Charlottetown, the Town of Stratford and the Town of Cornwall to provide innovation, investment and expertise for individual projects of economic and social benefit. It works to attract private sector developers and investors to the area so that it can capitalize on new opportunities and growth.

The Greater Charlottetown area had been slow in its growth of the urban area, and there was a great need to redevelop and revitalize the province’s capital city. To achieve this, the Greater Charlottetown area had to attract developers and investors with the resources to develop properties. Attracting these business opportunities meant providing them with detailed information about the community, which was made available through multiple resources, but obtaining it involved a lengthy and cumbersome process. CADC wanted a more readily accessible and productive means to provide this information to key players.

Baseline Business Geographics Inc. saw an opportunity to greatly improve the accessibility and availability of information to key players involved in revitalizing the region’s economy. Baseline developed an application that integrated mapping with the socioeconomic data that developers and investors require in the planning and development process. This practical and convenient application is the Economic Development Analyzer (EDA).

Background

The Charlottetown Area and Development Corporation is the principle point of contact for developers in the Greater Charlottetown area. It is responsible for conveying information to those organizations considering developing in the city of Charlottetown, the Town of Stratford and the Town of Cornwall. These developers require a great deal of information about prospective expansion areas in order to make the best decision on their site selection. The information is vital to them for the purpose of ensuring that their site selection criteria is met and their enterprise is located in the right area so that they can optimize their own business practices. Detailed information, such as socioeconomic data, is also necessary to make costs comparisons of alternate locations so that the best investment is made. It is in the best interests of the communities involved to provide developers with quality data so that addition or growth of business can contribute to the economic development of the surrounding area.

Problem

Although community information is vital to developers and investors, accessing and communicating it is very time consuming, especially because the information needs to be custom-tailored to the specifications of the developer. Before CADC purchased the Economic Development Analyzer, there was no practical way of conveying critical, geographic-specific information to developers.

Often times, a developer would spend days searching for required information by making numerous phone calls, visiting government offices, or searching many sites on the Internet. Although this was a redundant and time-consuming practice, CADC, at the time, had no better method of disseminating information.

CADC required a means to quickly and effectively provide information to individuals or companies wanting to build on or expand a property in the Charlottetown area and surrounding municipalities. In particular, CADC needed a system that would provide a productive means of communicating specific information to each commercial and industrial user interested in select properties with development potential.

Sound information is critical to developers in order to make well-informed decisions on their capital planning. Baseline Business Geographics Inc. saw an opportunity to provide developers with this important information, such as demographic profiling, consumer spending data and proximity to physical infrastructure. Baseline developed the Economic Development Analyzer, which now provides CADC with a much more efficient means of presenting the appropriate data to the right people.

Solution

Baseline Business Geographics Inc. developed an application that provided the region with an advanced level of economic analysis and information delivery. This application was created so that an untrained individual could easily use the system and find the information he was looking for through a ‘one-stop-shop’ business portal on the Internet. Accessible via any web browser, the Economic Development Analyzer presents economic, planning, utility, geographic and demographic information and important points of interest to a user. This information can be searched for by picking a point on a map or by entering a civic address, and the user can then specify the size of the radius from that point in which he wants to profile. With this application, the user can search for vacant land parcels or existing buildings and visually see where properties/buildings are for sale, rental or lease.

Although the data that can be inputted is limitless, the data used for CADC’s Economic Development Analyzer application includes the following information:

The layer control feature of the application allows the user to view as many or as few of these different data types, depending on his requirements. It also allows the user to define a trade area and view air photos of the land using digital ortho-imagery.

The Economic Development Analyzer’s most attractive feature is that it offers a wealth of important, timely information that usually has to be obtained through multiple sources. The application allows viewers to view, create and print maps; perform site-selection searches; develop custom demographic radius reports; and find available properties.

The availability of these resources gives the Charlottetown area an enormous opportunity to market itself to anywhere in the world. It allows developers to analyze their strategic advantages, such as proximity to markets and labor force characteristics. By helping enhance and revitalize the city’s appeal, the opportunity for both business and employment growth rises.

The Economic Development Analyzer helps CADC close the gaps in its process of delivering information to planners and developers, and with the EDA, CADC is turning its once wasteful practices into best practices. Baseline created the application knowing that developers have complex information requirements and tight timelines, which have become easily facilitated with customized reports and round-the-clock accessibility of the Economic Development Analyzer. The EDA has greatly improved the ease of information retrieval for developers, which translates into better prospects for economic development in the Greater Charlottetown area.

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Economic Dev. Analyzer

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Case Study

Customer: Charlottetown Area Development Corporation (CADC) Needs A timely and effective information system for planners and investors. Integrate mapping with other data. Easily display and maintain information. Effectively present information. Problem Need to develop local economy. Too many channels required to find economic development information. No way to tie all essential information together. Solutions Provide planners and investors with an easy-to-use location-based system implemented cost-effectively on the Web. Quick and easy access to data from multiple sources. Fast, easy access to business-critical information and the ability to see data geographically by site. Benefits Planners and investors have a powerful tool they can use themselves. Immediately view the locations of available properties/buildings. Productivity gains of CADC from better management of resources. CADC can better exploit the city’s opportunities by having a single easy-to-use source of information for individuals and companies who contribute to the health of the regional economy. Cost savings with centralized access to information and management costs. Promotes positive-looking image of the future of the Charlottetown area.

Our Clients Are Saying...

“The Economic Development Analyzer’s ability to present timely, easy-to-access information in a map-based format makes it an invaluable tool for businesses and developers,” explains Les Parsons, General Manager of CADC. “The application provides a great level of detail to information, and this allows clients to easily analyze data. Not only does the EDA save both CADC and the developer time and resources, but it also creates a very positive image of the Greater Charlottetown Area to investors and developers.”