Strathroy-Caradoc: What a $ 9m Fire Hall Says About A Boom Town

In Big-City Canada, With its Giant Budgets, Spending More Than $ 9 million on New Fire Hall May be no big deal.

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But for a place with 23,000 people, Like Strathroy-Caradoc, That Kind of Investment is massive.

The New Complex, Under Construction at the site of the municipality’s Main Fire Hall, is also a metaphor for How the Fast-Growing Community, West of London, is trying to prepare for the future.

“At this point, theres a huge requand placed on infrastructure and we like any other rural community trying to catch up to that,” Said Heather Lalonde, Strathroy-Caradoc’s Development Commissioner.

Only A Few Years Ago, Lalonde’s Job Didn’t Exist in Strathroy-Caradoc.

Times changes. Now the Town Needs has no person to deal with growth.

Amid a Population Boom, The Likes of Which It has been in generations, Strathroy-Caradoc is trying to Both Harness the Benefits of Rapid Growth and Reduce the Growing Bread That Come with that.

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Bleeding People Only A Few Years Ago, The Booming Municipality is now feeling pressures on housing and on industrial and agricultural lands.

With that dramatatic changes opportunity, However, and many Small Businesses Seeing That Potential Are Looking to Cash in On The Town’s Growth.

About Five Years Ago, for Example, Adam Cairns Decided to Move His Coffee-Roasting Business, O-Joe Coffee, To Strathroy from Nearby Mt. Brydges. Back in January, he moved ahead with the second phase of His Plan – Opening A Coffee Shop to Supplement His Business of Selling Coffee Beans to Other Shops.

“We want to be part of the community, we want to be involved in sports, we want those groups to think of us when they have an event,” he said. “Before, we were just in the back of the building, roasting away, but now we want to be a little bit bit involved.”

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The Town’s Future Success Will Hinge on Its Ability to Support, Attract and Hang Onto Businesses of All Types, Lalonde Said.

She Said the Municipality has a lot of untapped potential, and its rental near the us border and ontario’s 400-series Highways makes It a desired destination for Both Industrial and Agricultural Businesses.

Attracting Large Businesses is Critical to Supporting the Town’s Growth and Helping to Should Its Infrastructure Needs, But so is Economic Diversity, She Said, Noting Tourism is an Area Yet to be fully exploited.

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“We do not want to be a One-Industry Town,” Lalonde Said. “That’s too Risky for the Sustainability of A Local Economy.”

That idea has taken on added urgency now that canada is between a trade war with the us, its large trading partner, which could affect the municipality’s ability to attract new investment.

LALONDE DESCRIBES THE ECONOMIC CLIMATE AS “Turbulent” and Adding Enormous Pressure On Businesses. “We’ve been very lucky that we create the surroundings where our local industries want to grow here,” she said.

Still, lalonde remains Optimistic about the Town’s Potential and Its Ability to Fledge Out Into Something More Than a Bedroom Community to London. A Projects such as the recent opening of a trade school in town are developments that can help to make that different, she points out.

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“Not too much Small Communities have a skilled trade School, and Having Our Youth be Able to be Educated in Trades here – Not Having to Leave – and with the Industrial Base Here, There Are Jobs for them,” She Said.

“We are creating that environmental where Ourth don you are communities, but rather they stay, and they reinvest as well in (the community)… That Creates Just So Much Opportunity.”

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Over five weekes we are chronicling our community’s place in the country, the promise of greater prosperity, and the blueprint to get there. See The How Canada Wins Series Intro and other local stories here.

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