Alberta-based online business marketplace Connect4Commerce is partnering with Pillar 9 and Rocky View County to give Alberta Realtors a new platform for their commercial listings and provide potential buyers and sellers with information and tools.
Rocky View County, which is located just outside of Calgary, is the first municipality to use Connect4Commerce by creating its own branded site featuring all commercial and business listings in the municipality – a powerful new tool for economic development.
Pillar 9 was founded by nine Alberta real estate boards and the Alberta Real Estate Association.
“These partnerships come at a critical time as Alberta and Canada carve a path for economic recovery,” says Bruce Tannas, founder of Connect4Commerce. “We know small businesses and entrepreneurs are critical drivers of economic growth, and these new tools will help them find the information and listings they need to start or grow their business.”
He says many sites host residential listings but there are very few for the commercial real estate market.
Shane Griffin, CEO of Pillar 9, says Connect4Commerce now features Pillar 9 commercial listings, while providing current and prospective clients with helpful information about buying, selling and leasing commercial property and other business-related topics.
“This partnership will bring more eyes and interest to our Alberta Realtors’ listings, helping them connect with clients and driving sales across the province,” he says.
David Kalinchuk, economic development manager at Rocky View County, says, “Every partnership that Rocky View County engages in expands our reach and propels our brand as the best place for business in Alberta. Connect4Commerce’s commercial real estate feed brings opportunity to the grassroots and supports our local businesses, developers and commercial real estate brokers.”
He says, “As businesses throughout metropolitan Calgary and the region come to the realization that their taxes are going up, they quickly realize that the best place to relocate and pay lower taxes is Rocky View County. Real estate is where the rubber hits the road. I always say that landowners, developers and brokers drive commercial and industrial development in Rocky View County. The Connect4Commerce commercial real estate feed is one more tool that brings focus to investors, developers and new business opportunities.”
Connect4Commerce is a business-to-business marketplace platform. Small business owners and entrepreneurs can buy and sell items on the platform including finding wholesale products. It’s also a platform to buy or sell a business.
Tannas said a big thrust for him was getting the partnerships together. The marketplace, which is owned by Luna Media Inc., has been growing its audience since its inception at the beginning of this year.
“Having some background information to work with, as well as listings, I think it’s going to be really powerful as we move forward with these partnerships,” he says.
“We’re going to provide a very targeted audience for their listings. We are very targeted at small business owners, managers, entrepreneurs . . . Somebody who is thinking about sourcing a new location, they don’t necessarily start their journey by looking at the listings first and then figuring out how to do it. They may want to investigate a little bit about how to lease a place, what are the terms of a lease, that kind of thing, to understand that lay of the land.”
Within the Connect4Commerce platform will be a Rocky View County site where all the listings will be housed.
“It will show Rocky View’s branding and it will also have contacts to the economic development department at Rocky View. It allows them to have one place where all the business transactions are happening that they can point to,” says Tannas.
“So if they’re dealing with a client, somebody who is wanting to move into Rocky View from somewhere else, they can point to the site and say, ‘Here’s the leasing opportunities in our area, here’s the land for sale, or the commercial real estate for sale, here’s some of the professionals you can tap into if you move your site here.’”
Tannas says the company hopes to add other economic development agencies to the site.
Mario Toneguzzi is a contributing writer for REM. He has more than 40 years of experience as a daily newspaper writer, columnist, and editor. He worked for 35 years at the Calgary Herald, covering sports, crime, politics, health, faith, city and breaking news, and business. He now works on his own as a freelance writer for several national publications and consultant in communications and media relations/training. Mario was named in 2021 as one of the Top 10 Business Journalists in the World by PR News – the only Canadian to make the list.
