Town of Fairview grants EmPower Up! funding

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Owner of EmPower Up! Holly Sorgen, recently granted $117,500 from the Town of Fairview, has big plans to assist residents and entrepreneurs with their businesses, a way to get the town growing and more sustainable for young people and their futures. 

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The intent of this project is to connect with community owners, people who already have businesses, who already live there, and youth that have already been educated and are living there. They want to know what the major needs of the community are, and how these relate to some of the strategies the town has done around housing. 

She specializes in working with nonprofits and municipalities, assisting with things like strategic plans, business plans, board development, community consultations, and round tables. 

Her work with Jenna Armstrong, Fairview economic development and tourism coordinator, led to the idea of creating Business in a Box, a way for residents and aspiring entrepreneurs to get a good feel of the kinds of business opportunities there are. 

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Part of the project will include a how-to on starting a business in Fairview. “We’ll have done all of the relevant market research at the macro and micro level. We’ll have done all of the kind of client avatar, customer avatar work,” said Sorgen. 

EmPower Up! won’t have its own in person office. Sorgen regularly visits Fairview and will conduct meetings when she’s there. She plans to be in town throughout the summer and into the fall. 

She’s planning for a kickoff meeting around the end of June and beginning of July. Here’s Sorgen’s contact information: [email protected]. 

Funding from the Regional Growth Action Plan project, part of Fairview’s economic development budget, received eight proposals. 

“We had a lot of interest in this one, and so we narrowed it down–She’s [Holly Sorgen] done work in this area, so she knows the area,” said CAO Daryl Greenhill at a council meeting. 

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Sorgen is also executive director of Community Futures, Grande Prairie and region. She’s been with Community Futures since 1997, and it’s a nonprofit with limited funds and resources. 15 years ago, she started EmPower Up! so she could supplement her income and take what she does to the next level. 

Housing is a double edged sword, she added. They want to be close to zero vacancy, meaning there’s a business case for new housing development, but there’s a challenge in trying to meet the need, especially as a rural community that has limited means from taxation. 

To help with Fairview’s housing shortage, the town has been involved with the Sustainable Housing Initiative, a look into where they can put their focus, and how they can create incentives to create more housing in a variety of ways. 

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“As a person who has lived in the region my entire life, I can’t really point a finger at what year, but it feels like there’s just kind of this growing tide of people who are very proud to live there, people who are looking at Fairview as a place of opportunity, people that are really, truly trying to figure out how they can stay longer, how they can come back quicker, and start businesses there.”

On Fairview’s big potential business opportunities, Sorgen said event spacing is one of them. 

“When we think about Fairview being kind of a hub spot of the Peace, it just is a logical place to host events in any way, shape or form–There’s a lot of recreational potential within the town.”

There’s lots of infrastructure that would support this, and lots of groups doing some amazing things with indoor and outdoor recreation. 

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 “I think that there’s some opportunity around housing, housing development, becoming landlords, all of that sort of stuff becomes different ways of being able to use the housing industry and the demand for housing for business purposes.”

There’s also a large number of healthcare practitioners in the region, she added. “I’m sure there’s a lot that we could do with supplementing that and becoming known as kind of a supplemental medical community as well. So holistic practitioners, that sort of stuff. I think that those are all low hanging fruits, that there’s people who are already doing it. How could we scale that and really provide some real growth or vertical integration into the community as well?”

In terms of the Northwestern Polytechnic Fairview campus, Sorgen said they’re looking into what opportunities there are with engaging students in trades and other industries, and how they could make Fairview the most viable place for them to complete education and start families and businesses there. 

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There’s a huge component around young workers and how they can be supported in establishing themselves, and their roots in the community sooner. “I think a lot of people go away and then they come back. But what if they went away with the intent that they’d come back? I think that’s what we’re trying to build out. It is a real future that youth can see themselves pursuing in this community and keeping their roots as well.”

“Projects like this with Fairview allow me to be able to take that skill set and those connections and networks and put them together for that municipality.”

They never do anything without the idea of community in mind. It’s important that the project is very grassroots.

“Fairview holds a small place in my heart. I grew up in the Blueberry Creek, Spirit River area. We started talking about all of the different strategies that the town had completed, and trying to figure out how we could move them all together for something that was really beneficial with action behind it for the town.”

[email protected]

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