In his State of the City address Mayor Dave
challenges us to make Greater Sudbury "Ontario's foremost
lifestyle city." I applaud our mayor's vision and his
imaginative ideas to help make this vision a reality.
For years, those of us interested in economic
development have attended visioning workshops, conferences and
lectures including talks by former Winnipeg mayor Glenn Murray
and designer Bruce Mau who have all said basically the same
thing - the key to economic development is quality of
life.
In today's high-tech world, business can be
done from anywhere, so why not do it from a place that offers a
fantastic lifestyle. Greater Sudbury has a natural beauty and
the potential for a quality of life other cities can only dream
about.
Our mayor has wisely encapsulated these
visioning ideas with the phrase "lifestyle city" and has
offered up some bold initiatives to promote this vision
including a band shell over the Bell Park amphitheatre, a
downtown performing arts centre, a hotel and convention centre
on Ramsey Lake, and exciting landscape improvements linking
these sites together.
Recent weekend events, the Northern Lights
Festival Boreal and the Dragon Boat Races have shown the need
for improvements at the Bell Park site.
These first class events are part of what
will make Sudbury "the lifestyle city," but these events need
to flourish and grow with the help of an improved
infrastructure and consistent community strategy.
We have done the talking, we have done the
visioning- Now is precisely the time to take the "tiger by the
tail" and point it in the right direction.
Mark Palumbo
Chair, Music and Film in Motion