On Thursday (March 23), Airdrie Economic Development received an Award of Excellence for Community Economic Development for Mid Sized Communities from Economic Development Alberta.

Team Leader Kent Rupert said that the credit for the award has to go to his team for their hard work, and to the City of Airdrie for allowing them to work creatively.

"We've always had a pretty aggressive economic development team. Certainly Council and senior administration allow us the freedom to go out and try new things. We're really fortunate with that. We've built a really great team here that's creative and sort of leading edge in the province with a lot of the stuff we've done."

The team received the award at the Provincial Economic Development Conference in Banff, and Rupert said they did not know they would be recognized ahead of time. Rupert said it felt good to see their work lauded.

"It's pretty exciting when you get to be able to take the whole team onstage and have Minister [of Economic Development and Trade Deron] Bilous present us the award. We were pretty excited."

Airdrie Economic Development were given the award for their "We Are Airdrie" campaign, which was a public engagement campaign for their ten year strategy. Rupert says the work will continue, with his team implementing that ten year strategy.

 

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