Why Barrie is a great place to run a business. And build one.

I've been running Fifth and Missing out of Barrie since 2003. In the early years, most of our clients were local businesses with no web presence, and many of them weren't sure they needed one. Today we work with companies across Canada and internationally, and the team is still based here. Over more than twenty years, I've watched a mid-sized Ontario city grow into something worth paying attention to.

This piece is my honest read on why Barrie is a practical place to run a business, drawn from two decades of working here and the most current numbers I could find.

Barrie has an economy of its own

For years, Barrie was known as a place people live while they work in Toronto. Plenty of residents still make that drive. The bigger change is how much work is now based here, and how much more is planned.

The city's Official Plan, approved by the province in 2023, plans for 298,000 residents and 150,000 jobs by 2051. When the plan was being drafted in 2021, Barrie had about 83,400 jobs, so the plan calls for local employment to nearly double. Growth is already moving quickly. According to the province, Barrie's population grew by almost 13 per cent over the past two years.

Healthcare and manufacturing anchor a large share of that employment. Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre, the largest hospital in Simcoe Muskoka and a University of Toronto family medicine teaching site, has close to 4,000 staff and more than 500 physicians. Barrie is also home to more than 210 manufacturers, including a cluster of automation and precision machining companies, with Honda's two assembly plants located in the region.

Industrial demand is moving up the 400

GTA industrial space got expensive quickly. Net asking rents roughly doubled between early 2021 and late 2023, and even after a correction they still average around $16 per square foot. Vacancy rose to an eleven-year high earlier this year and has since started to tighten again, which puts renewed pressure on businesses that need space.

Barrie-area industrial rents sit in a lower band, roughly $13 to $16 per square foot, and the city's land supply just grew. On January 1, 2026, a provincial boundary adjustment moved about 4,133 acres from Springwater and Oro-Medonte townships into Barrie to support long-term housing and employment growth. Before that change, the province projected Barrie would run out of employment land by the 2040s.

Businesses that once assumed it was Toronto or nothing are now running the numbers on Barrie as a base of operations.

Regional infrastructure is catching up as well. Major construction on the Bradford Bypass (Highway 425), which will connect Highway 400 to Highway 404, began in May 2026. The province expects it to cut travel times across York Region and Simcoe County by up to 35 minutes. Inside the city, the Bayview Point Commercial Centre on Big Bay Point Road broke ground in 2023 with 38 acres of industrial space, and the developer estimated around 500 jobs once the buildings are complete and occupied.

Lower costs, and a team that can afford to live nearby

Running a business in Barrie generally costs less than running the same business in the GTA, and housing is where the gap is easiest to see. In August 2026, the median asking rent for a two-bedroom unit in Barrie was about $2,015 a month, compared with $2,750 in Toronto. That's roughly 27 per cent lower.

For an employer, that difference shows up in hiring and retention. People who can afford to live close to work tend to stay, and staying matters. Invest Barrie cites research putting the cost of replacing an employee anywhere from 30 to 400 per cent of their salary, depending on the role. You're also less likely to be bidding against Bay Street salaries for every hire.

Clients have told me the same thing over the years. The ones who chose Barrie did it because the numbers worked and their teams had a better quality of life here.

The talent pipeline got stronger this year

The biggest recent change is Lakehead University's Barrie STEM Hub, the city's first university campus. It officially opened in August 2026 across two downtown locations, including the former transit terminal on Maple Avenue, and the first students started classes on September 8. The hub teaches engineering, mechatronics and computer science, and Lakehead expects it to bring upwards of 800 students, researchers and staff into the downtown core.

Georgian College has been the region's main talent source for decades. Its Barrie Campus is the largest of seven, and the college runs one of the largest co-op programs in Ontario, with about 6,200 employer partners and roughly 5,000 students enrolled in co-op. Georgian reports that 90.3 per cent of its graduates find work within six months, a graduate employment rate that has beaten the provincial average for more than 25 years. Invest Barrie reports that about 1,100 Georgian graduates enter manufacturing-related fields each year.

Georgian is also moving four of its Design and Visual Arts programs into a new downtown location, with a phased move-in starting in winter 2027. We've worked with Georgian-trained designers and developers over the years, and having those programs in the downtown core will strengthen the city's creative community.

Quality of life is part of the business case

This one sounds soft until a key hire turns down an offer because they don't want to live in the city anymore. It happens. More people now weigh where they'll live as heavily as the job itself.

Barrie sits on Lake Simcoe, and the waterfront is walkable from downtown. Ski hills are within an hour in the winter, and cottage country is close by in the summer. The downtown has been investing in itself too. The Downtown Barrie BIA reported more than $15 million in economic impact from its 2024 festivals and events, which drew nearly 300,000 visitors.

Tourism adds to that. In 2025, Barrie welcomed nearly one million overnight visitors, generating more than $212 million in economic impact, and hotel occupancy reached 70.4 per cent. People choose to spend time here, and that supports local retail, hospitality and the businesses that serve them.

The buy-Canadian shift is helping local businesses

Over the last couple of years, I've noticed a change in how Canadian businesses choose their service providers. Clients who used to go with whoever ranked best on Google, regardless of location, now ask up front whether they're dealing with a Canadian company.

For Barrie businesses, that's a real advantage right now. A known local presence carries more weight with regional customers, and being Canadian carries more weight with national ones. A Barrie business can offer both.

What this means for your marketing

Growing businesses in a growing city need marketing that keeps up. We've worked with Barrie businesses since 2003, and the way customers find local companies has changed more in the last five years than in the fifteen before that. Google's local results and Business Profiles carry more weight than ever, and a growing number of people now use AI tools to find and compare service providers.

Your website is still the foundation. It should load quickly, show up in search, be easy for your team to update and explain clearly what you do. That's where our Barrie web design work starts. What's changed is the bar. As more businesses move into the region, competition for local search gets tighter, and local SEO and Google Ads increasingly decide who gets the call.

The same applies offline. If your print materials and your website look like they came from two different companies, customers notice. Our graphic design and print team handles branding, catalogues, packaging, trade show materials and the day-to-day design work that keeps everything consistent.

If you're running a business here and your marketing doesn't reflect what you do and who you are, it's worth fixing. I'm happy to take a look and give you my honest read, at no cost and with no pressure attached.

Written by Jason Grant