Warwick embracing innovation to solve some of its challenges | Sarnia This Week

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

Or, in the case of the Township of Warwick, a small rural community in Lambton County, innovative ones.

The municipality of fewer than 4,000, whose main community is the town of Watford, is becoming a bright spot in rural Southwestern Ontario as a place that makes things happen.

For starters, there’s a need for new homes in the community.

After more than a decade without a new subdivision, and desperate for new homes to keep young families, local politicians last year decided the municipality should reverse the development process by purchasing and servicing a piece of land itself – forking out $250,000 for the project – and then going shopping for a homebuilder.

More than half of the 11 homes have been sold, with the municipality looking to recoup the cost in property taxes and revenue from future developments.

Now looking to revitalize Watford’s downtown, the municipality just announced the winner of its first Win This Space competition, which gives the winner a year of free rent and utilities to help them launch a business there.

“There are absolutely opportunities here, and I think it’s well worth it investing in new people and new ideas,” said Mayor Jackie Rombouts.

This year’s winner was a physiotherapy and yoga centre, a service not currently offered in the community.

The contest was launched as a way to attract new businesses and deal with the core’s vacancy rate, an issue small towns across Ontario have been facing for several years.

“We’ve been focused on downtown revitalization over the last number of years with a number of grants and incentives available to businesses owners for primarily structural improvements like façades . . . but this is kind of like the next step,” said Amanda Gubbels, the municipality’s top administrative member.

“Our vacancy rate is not unusually high by any means. It’s just something we want to proactively work on.”

The competition, for which the municipality set aside $20,000, attracted only one applicant this year, but it’s the hope of officials that it will grow in popularity as the word spreads. Similar contests have proved successful in other small communities, including Clinton and Simcoe.

“As a municipality, you only need one successful business to make the program a success,” Gubbels said.

Like most rural small towns, one of the biggest challenges Warwick faces is attracting, and in some cases, retaining people. Young people who leave the municipality for education are not returning, Rombouts said, something the municipality is trying to address.

“They don’t see the value that we have here in rural Ontario … but there’s a great quality of life here,” she said, pointing to the lower cost of homes and lower taxes as two advantages.

According to the latest census data, sluggish or non-existent population growth was especially visible among Southwestern Ontario towns outside the Greater Toronto Area’s commuter orbit.

That affects the municipality’s tax base and its ability to provide a good quality of life to its residents.

That’s why Rombouts said council is comfortable using taxpayers’ money for these type projects – putting their money where their mouth is.

“If we are not willing to invest in our downtown, nobody else will,” she said. “So we need to show that it is worth it, and it absolutely is.”