Capitalizing on "unique" attributes.

• Author: Ross, Ian
• Position: Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario - Brief Article

Over the years, John Rowswell has been known as one of city hail's biggest champions, but-also one of its biggest critics.

The tenacious and free-thinking entrepreneur's mandate for change by bringing a more business-minded approach to the mayor's chair was enough to convince an impatient electorate to unseat incumbent Steve Butland last fall.

With the city's fortunes having been historically tied to the boom-and-bust cycle of the steel industry, Rowswell intends to speed up the momentum of economic diversification and job growth by focusing on his transpolar air cargo initiative, developing the Gateway site to its fullest tourism potential and establishing an information-technology centre.

But his main message resonating with voters was less reliance on consultants' feasibility studies "that tell us what we already know," and having a more attentive ear cocked to a wide spectrum of expertise residing from within the community, Roswell says.

And although he admits to some growing pains in the rocky first few months of his tenure in making the, transition from the private sector to the public office, he believes council, staff and the community are firmly behind him in his push for economic growth.

"What I'm having to learn is how to sugar-coat things in a way that is less direct but is still in the direction we want to go," says Rowswell, who splits his time between overseeing city business and running his 14-year-old engineering firm.

"If you're a businessman from out-of-town, the number one thing you want to hear is consistency in what you're being told by city hall,"

Rowswell, who was previously defeated as a mayoral candidate in 1994, experienced those frustrations first-hand in pitching a water park project to the city in the late 1980's, and then having the city embrace his transpolar air cargo idea, but drag its feet in moving ahead with the project. As a co-chair on economic solutions council of the city's five-year strategic plan initiative, Building an Extraordinary Community, Rowswell tapped the best grass root ideas that came forward from the community and molded them into his election platform.

It starts by building better relations with local and out-of-. town business, he says, and the establishment of a...