Huronia 3 and 4 are included as earlier blogs on Workathon.Huronia 1,2,and 3, are consulting pieces on possible improvements to Midland.Huronia 4,5 and 6 are blogs on improvements to Wasaga Beach.Huronia 4 is also included in an earlier blog on Workathon.Huronia 5 is one of my blogs on Wordpress called Econothon.Here is Huronia 6, also a piece on Wasaga Beach.
Huronia 5
The basis of Huronia 5 is that there are a number of things that the town council can do to improve business coming into Wasaga.The town council can do a number of things easily and cheaply to increase traffic into Wasaga Beach and keep visitors longer.This includes programs to encourage restaurants on Mosley Street(the main street) to reduce prices and try to increase the number of visitors.Also to buy up abandoned properties on the main street and use them for community businesses such as thrift shops or even a drop-in centre.This will require little expenditure and little change to the structure of Wasaga Beach.
Bigger changes The changes mentioned in Huronia 5 will not have a big impact.Wasaga Beach has a population of 17,000
according to the census figures but the town sign says it has a population of 18,000. Both are the peak population and do not reflect the population in the winter.It is somewhat comparable to another town further along the beach called Port Elgin.Port Elgin is on Lake Huron and is built along the beach.It has a population of only 10,000 to 11,000 but is within 3 to 4 kilometres of another town called Southampton.Their total population is about 18,000.It's main street is very similar to Wasaga as both have empty lots and houses and cottages on their main street.But I believe that Port Elgin has more new construction;it has a new Walmart,Canadian Tire and two or three new subdivisions, all in the east end.Both towns have a steady base of population from campers.Camping facilities are excellent in both towns.
Both have small libraries as only a small percentage of the population use it. But Wasaga definitely has more motels -both low-priced and higher-priced motels.Port Elgin has more cottages for rent and generally visitors stay longer in cottages than in motels.Port Elgin has the headquarters for two small bus companies and they have maintenance facilities for the buses here also.Also their bus terminal is a little bigger as it connects to more towns than Wasaga Beach.Both Port Elgin and Wasaga Beach have a few higher-priced motels for high end visitors.But neither really counts on getting much traffic here.In summary, their structure is similar.
A new platform
Small towns need some kind of platform to jump from a small town to a mid-sized town, for example,a town like Hanover or Peterboro.Unless a town has a very special situation such as an industry or a software company that is in town the usual platform to growth is agricultural or lumber processing.First the town must have successful farming or forestry around the town.The processing would be done inside the town.Examples abound, for example, Creemore has a brewery,Bobcaygeon has a milk factory,Owen Sound has grain milling and other towns have small lumber milling plants.Hanover has a small grain milling operation as well as a meat processing plant.These plants cannot compete with multi-national plants but they will satisfy the region and have fresher products.Here is the most popular way for small towns to jump to the next level. But it is far from easy to do.Both Port Elgin and Wasaga Beach need a big investor and some kind of guarantee of low wages (at least for the initial period).And they need some people with special skills.
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