Stimulating Economic Development in Small-Town Ontario

Company: Batawa Development Corporation, Batawa, Ontario
History: Historic shoe factory village founded by Thomas Bata in 1939 on the Trenton River near Trenton, Ontario.
Regional population: 155,000

The Opportunity: To come up with an innovative building information model that could support the re-development of a former shoe factory and 648 hectares of land that will attract jobs, new home buyers and economic development to a region that has been hit hard by unemployment.

The Challenge: Batawa Development Corporation (BDC) developed a sustainable community redevelopment plan to build 500 homes and a 40-hectare business park. But the company’s chairperson, Sonja Bata, didn’t want another cookie-cutter bedroom community. She wanted creative ideas for building a model village that demonstrated excellence in design as well as environmentally and economically sustainability and social responsibility.

How a group of IRDI interns are helping: Carleton University architecture professor Stephen Fai and graduate students Katie Graham, Todd Duckworth and Nevil Wood—funded through the Mitacs-Accelerate internship program—developed a 3D computer model that produces life-like simulations showing how this historic town looked in the past, what it looks like today, and what it could look like in the future. BDC will use this building information model as a planning and marketing tool to plan roads, infrastructure and construction, and to show potential clients what’s available in the village and how their project fits into the community. The design could become a model for other small towns. Nevil recently presented the model, which he has described as “Google Earth on steroids,” in Prague to the bi-annual meeting of the International Committee for Documentation of Cultural Heritage (a committee of the International Council on Monuments and Sites).

 

Landowner and developer: Heather Candler, General Manager, Batawa Development Corporation

“Creating simulations like this are beyond our capability. We now have an incredible, multi-faceted tool at our fingertips that can be used to develop storm water and other servicing plans and stimulate community and economic development. It also provides us with an exceptional marketing tool that allows people to “walk” through the community and to envision what is possible. Now we can begin working with town planners, architects and designers to start attracting jobs and residents back to the community.”

Demand for interns growing: Batawa Development Corporation is one of several companies and organizations that are benefiting from Mitacs-Accelerate’s new internship cluster model. Introduced in response to a frequent demand from industry partners, the model places three or more graduate students or post-doctoral fellows on a single research topic, which allows more in-depth, longer-term research projects. In 2010-11, 87 cluster projects were approved to support internships across the country. Industry partners contribute a minimum of $30,000.