This July 20th news release from the town recognizes ProfitGuide naming Richmond Hill the 6th most lucrative place to do business :
One day later the Banner reported that Vaughan ranked second best place in Ontario to do business, and eighth in the country. They also beat out Richmond Hill for being the most lucrative place to do business.
The news release from Aurora : crickets
Instead of acknowledging the growing number of storefronts up and down Yonge street the town seems content on ignoring it in favor of its status quo Economic Development strategies and tactics. These mostly revolve around an annual yawn-fest of meaningless awards and platitudes towards the shrinking number of businesses that have yet to jump ship.
When members of council publicly insult national chain stores looking to establish their headquarters here it’s no surprise that Aurora has lost the headquarters of Priestly Demolition, Wild Wing and Magna all to our neighbours in King
The seeds of failure seem to be in no small part sewn by the chair of the town’s Economic Development Advisory Committee from the 2006-2010 term of council. the inexplicably appointed Chris Ballard, then not even a member of council.
It was his $30,000 brain fart that has saddled the town with the businessaurora microsite, which has delivered everything I predicted back in 2009.
Target sectors identified are: Advanced Manufacturing, Green Industries & Interactive Media. yet when you explore the news list only one successful start-up is listed and it doesn’t fall into any of these categories.
Neither does the gelato company Mayor La-De-Dawe flew to the states to win over, even though they were already established in Vaughan.
InvestInYork produces a York Region Economic Development reports in 6 month snapshots both in print and available for download via York Link.
When you review the January to June 2015 edition there are 49 success stories profiled, only 1 from Aurora featured on page 5.
When you review the June to December 2015 edition there are 98 success stories profiled, none from Aurora.
Add them together and Aurora can celebrate a single Economic Development success story over the entire 2015 calendar year, where our regional counterparts are having no trouble pushing past Aurora into all the sectors it’s claiming to target.
In February Mayor Dawe stood before a business audience to proclaim “We have created a strong, stable local economy base to foster growth and nurture new and existing businesses in Aurora.” . It is reported that he did so holding a rolled-up copy of the 2016 Aurora Living Guide in his hand.
Yup, only Dawe’s leadership could recognize the Aurora Living Guide as a far greater recognized measure for the success of our community’s business acumen than the nationally read ProfitGuide or regionally produced York Region Economic Development report.
As our Regional representative Mayor Dawe must appear as someone fumbling with scissors anytime he attempts to insert himself into discussions surrounding matters of Economic Development with those of our neighbors who are cutting some very large ribbons.
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