2020 proved tough year for organizations, businesses
This past year was strange and difficult for a number of organizations and businesses. We saw COVID shut down our restaurants for a time only to have them come back strong in the summer months due to a high volume of visitors from neighboring states. Retail stores were hurt by the Canadian Border closure and some struggled to replace the missed revenue from Canadian customers that bring their business to our city and county. Amazon continues to hurt all retail stores as more people shop on line. Retail stores saw on average a 16% decrease last year due to the pandemic while e-commerce sales saw an increase. To help our retail stores, please consider shopping at a local retailer before hitting the Amazon 3 clicks.
A few highlighted project updates are summarized below:
State broadband grants: The state of Idaho Department of Commerce had $50M available to internet providers for expansion of the internet through the state. Boundary County was awarded approximately $3 million to two internet providers to expand fiber into Moyie Springs and wireless internet throughout the county. Many residents benefitted from the expansion of internet service. The State of Idaho is looking at another round of state broadband grants in which we could see some additional benefit from in our county.
Infrastructure: EDC continues to support infrastructure upgrades in Boundary County. EDC supported the upgrades to the Moyie City Sewer system which will be a great benefit to the city. It will have a lasting impact if the county or city wishes to use it for expansion of sewer in the city or county. The upgrade will be complete in 2022. Also, EDC supported the city of Moyie Springs is upgrading their city park through an Equinox grant this past year. The park is already being used by a large number of families and we expect the expansion to be a benefit to the many families who use the park. Currently, the expansion will include new tables, a climbing wall for kids and additional playground equipment.
Marketing: EDC along with the Visitor Center did two marketing campaigns this past year. The first was with Monica Goes who markets more to people who want a unique vacation of seeing different sites in our area along with eating at some of our restaurants. She started to distribute some of her videos and pictures out in national publications and North Idaho saw our digital inquiries go from 5,000 per month to 800,000 per month! The next marketing campaign we did was with Chad Case and Co. Chad Case markets their materials to more of an outdoors type visitor. We expect his videos and photos to be pushed out in the next month. We hope to see similar hits to our digital publications from prospective visitors. Both of these marketing campaigns should increase our visitors to Boundary County by this summer.
Value added producer grants: EDC along with the University of Idaho extension office worked with local small farmers to apply for USDA value added producer grants. These grants allow our small farmers to scale up their annual production and sales. Two small scale farmers were awarded value added producer grants totally just less than $100,000.
Business purchases: With several properties and businesses for sale there has been a variety of individuals and investors looking at purchasing businesses or property to build a business. I expect the landscape of our county to change in the next 3-5 years with new businesses and business owners coming into Boundary County.
Dennis Weed is director of the Boundary Economic Development Council.