Jeff Renaud: Grassroots campaign leads to St. Stephen revitalization

Jeff Renaud, CAO of the Town of St. Stephen, New Brunswick, chats with Municipal World CEO Susan Gardner during the 2019 Federation of Canadian Municipalities conference in Quebec City. The two discuss how a grassroots initiative – Future St. Stephen – helped grow the local economy.

St. Stephen is home to approximately 5,000 people in the southwest corner of New Brunswick. A long-time anchor to the local economy is Ganong Bros., Ltd. Established in 1873, Ganong has the distinction of being Canada’s oldest independently family owned and operated chocolate company.

The community’s fate in recent years began to turn when residents came together to discuss revitalization of the town. Since that Vision Summit back in 2015, the members of Future St. Stephen have met regularly to take that input and turn it into an action plan for community development.

Four Key Focus Points for Future St. Stephen

Future St. Stephen focuses on four main target areas. Citizen attitude and engagement, business support and development, population growth, and community development are keys in moving toward a more vibrant and thriving town.

“Our community was struggling in all aspects of community development, actually. Our population was declining, our storefronts were empty, all of our young adults were chasing the big dollars in Alberta during the Alberta oil boom,” Renaud said. “It took a group of leaders in the community to come together to realize that the only way things were going to change is if the community took hold of their own destiny.”

Future St. Stephen is jointly operated by the town, the chamber of commerce, the business improvement area, as well as several key stakeholders in the community.

Unity, Prosperity Mark St. Stephen Success

Ultimately, Renaud said, the council, not to mention his staff, are focused on building an economically vibrant community.

“That spot where we have a perfect balance of the busyness that comes with economic development and that small-town quality of life feel,” Renaud said. “We want to be able to attract tourists in with our chocolate history and our chocolate culture. We want to make that a key part of our community as well. As much as we like progress, you don’t want to forget our past and who we actually are at our core.”  MW

✯ Municipal World Insider and Executive Members: You might also be interested in the article: The three ages of economic development. Note that you can now access the complete collection of past articles (and more) from your membership dashboard.

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