Huronia XII Cobourg needs help too

   The Huronia series was intended to give some assistance(although not asked for) to the small towns in the Lake Simcoe and southern Georgian Bay area.Most of these towns can use all the help they can get.And some only want new jobs if they fit into the existing structure of the town.No smokestack industry for twons with beaches.For example, I have suggested milk processing (and given a preferred location) to Wasaga Beach and they prefer to stick to their booming tourist industry, Who can blame them?This changed when I did a piece on Peterboro which is semi-industrial and not in the Huronia area.This, Huronia XII is along those lines as it is not in the Huronia area either.
        Cobourg- a former thriving Industrial Centre
    Cobourg was established in 1898; as the caption shows it has a good beach on Lake Ontario. It started later than Peterboro which is just north of it but began to build up quickly.By the 1900s  it had several small industries and was more advanced than many other small towns along Lake Ontario.But times changed and left Cobourg behind other locations like Bowmanville, Oshawa and Peterboro.It tried but failed to catch up.
    Cobourg - then and now
    Cobourg has a population of 18,500 but it has grown slowly.Yet it is well connected in a transportation sense;it is on the main CN and  CP rail line and on the 401 which connects to Toronto and Kingston. Also it is only 7 kilometeres away from Port Hope which has a population of about 15,000 and  can be entered by an extension of a main street in Cobourg.The two towns are closely bonded in a number of ways.                                                             It did have a small chemical business and the chemicals were used in the pulp and paper business.But this business has closed now.The biggest employer in town would be the food industry with producers like Weetabix, Weston Bakeries,Brandneu foods and Curtis Chicks in Port Hope.Cobourg also has an Agricultural Food Venture Centre which is a non-profit operation which does small batch food processing and packaging.But there is no connection  nor attempt at consolidation between these businesses.
    Let's start with the Food Venture Centre
    I think that there is a place for government funding in Cobourg.The connection between all these separate food businesses in Cobourg is the Agricultural Food Venture Centre.At the present time it only has packaging and processing in small batches.If more investment(government money) was put into it then it could become a centre for processing and packaging for a number of foods, including chicken and agricultural products.For example, wheat and flour for baking could be processed and packaged here.The finished products could be moved to market.In the case of chicken it would be moved to retail grocers and in the case of wheat and flour to Weetabix and Weston Bakeries.This would likely mean that the number of jobs in the Food Venture Centre would triple and the number in the three suppliers would increase by some percentage.However this does not prove that the beach fixes everything.                 use Workathon for blogs on economic development; read Workathon for blogs on economic development;use Workathon for ideas on economic development