City's effort to attract jobs wins awards

[mattgrande]

http://www.thespec.com/news/local/ar...medium=twitter

Hamilton's struggle to reinvent its economy is attracting North American attention.

The effort, and the city department behind it, have been given two awards by the American magazine considered the bible of economic development.

Site Selection Magazine, based in Atlanta, Ga., has honoured Hamilton's economic development department as one of the top performing economic development organizations in Canada. The city itself has been ranked as one of the top five metropolitan areas in the country for economic development.

[thistleclub]

The 2010 rankings are based on data gathered between June 2009 and May 2010, a period when Hamilton scored 15 corporate facility projects that met two of three key criteria: an investment of at least $1 million, at least 50 new jobs created or at least 20,000 new square feet.

The measure still sounds a little old-school. Missing in this picture is the quality and nature of the employment. It seems like you could technically win this by filling the Stelco tower with telemarketing banks. Which I'm terribly glad that they didn't, but still.