“Sudbury: Canada’s Resourceful City.”

Like it?

Hope so, because taxpayers are on the hook for the $70,000 it cost to come up with it.

Greater Sudbury Development Corporation staff, along with local marketing and advertising firm 50 Carleton, have been working together to rebrand the City of Lakes.

At last month’s development corporation’s board meeting, 50 Carleton’s Henry Goegan and Tony Jurgilas revealed the new branding. According to the board’s meeting minutes, this has been in the works for at least a year (they go back to January 2013 on the Invest Sudbury website).

February’s minutes pegged the cost of the five rebranding phases (research and analysis; brand strategy development; visual identity development; brand launch strategy and planning and identity guidelines development) at $70,050.

Darren Stinson, chair of the development corporation, is coming to city hall Tuesday to update councillors on the corporation’s activities. It’s expected the ‘resourceful city’ will be discussed.

“I think it’s clever without being something totally crazy,” board member Frank Chartrand said Monday.

“It makes sense for us as a city, obviously, with our background in extraction and mining, but also points to the future – seeing things like health care and professional services being big attractions for people to come to our city,” Chartrand, the founder of Bureau Group, added.

“Obviously there’s going to be backlash. I think we’re seeing some of that now. At the same time, it’s easy to point the finger and give your opinion when there’s no visual representation of that name. We can’t see what it’s going to look like, we’re just seeing the words. When taxpayer money gets spent on this type of thing, people are quick to criticize.”

laura.stricker@sunmedia.ca

Twitter: @LauraStricker