Perth Employment Lands Strategy

Planning & Policy

Town of Perth

Perth, Ontario

2021

Colliers Project Leaders

Perth has long played an important role as an employment and service centre for the surrounding region. As industries and employment needs evolve, the Town saw an opportunity to take a closer look at its employment lands and consider how they could best support economic growth over the next 20 years.

Re:Public, in collaboration with Colliers Project Leaders, developed the Employment Lands Strategy to provide a 20-year direction for Perth’s employment areas and inform the Town’s upcoming Official Plan review. The work combined a parcel-level employment lands inventory with economic and market analysis, peer-municipality comparisons, and employment projections to understand not only how much land Perth would need, but which lands offered the greatest opportunity for future growth.

The resulting strategy identified priority employment areas, opportunities to reposition lands that no longer reflected their surroundings, policy and zoning changes, infrastructure priorities, and updates to the Town’s industrial land pricing approach.

Understanding Perth’s Employment Landscape

The Strategy began with a detailed look at Perth’s existing employment lands and its position within the broader regional economy. A parcel-level inventory examined land use, development status, servicing and access, while employment trends, workforce characteristics and comparisons with six peer municipalities provided a broader market perspective.

Together, the analysis showed that Perth had a significant supply of employment land, a relatively self-contained workforce, and competitive land prices, but that opportunities varied considerably across its employment areas. These findings provided the foundation for assessing future land needs and determining where employment growth could best be accommodated.

Planning for Future Employment Growth

Building on the existing conditions and market analysis, the Strategy examined how economic shifts, including e-commerce, changing manufacturing, automation, and remote work, could influence Perth’s employment needs, and projected employment growth and land demand through 2041.

The Strategy identified distinct opportunities across Perth’s employment areas, from prioritizing the southern industrial area for traditional industry and leveraging Highway 7 for businesses requiring regional access, to considering more flexible uses for older industrial lands near the core.

Strategic Recommendations

The Strategy translated the findings into recommendations spanning land use policy, zoning, infrastructure, economic development, and municipal land management. Recommendations included modernizing employment policies and permitted uses, prioritizing servicing and investment, repositioning underused sites, redesignating sites, and updating the Town’s Industrial Lands Pricing Policy.

The work also identified longer-term opportunities, including industrial symbiosis around the southern employment area and incentives to support targeted employment development. Together, these actions provided a practical direction for incorporating employment planning into the Town’s Official Plan review and broader economic development efforts.