{"id":16617,"date":"2017-02-22T17:27:16","date_gmt":"2017-02-22T22:27:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=16617"},"modified":"2017-02-22T17:27:16","modified_gmt":"2017-02-22T22:27:16","slug":"community-is-key-in-retaining-business-says-mayor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/community-is-key-in-retaining-business-says-mayor\/","title":{"rendered":"Community is key in retaining business, says Mayor"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

Drawing in new \u2013 and fostering existing \u2013 businesses were in the spotlight last week as Mayor Geoff Dawe sat down with the Aurora Chamber of Commerce for a wide-ranging Question and Answer session last week.
\nThe Q&A came following the Mayor\u2019s Annual Luncheon, hosted by the Chamber this year at Oakview Terrace in north Richmond Hill.
\nThe event attracted a healthy crowd and a cross-section of the local business and political communities to hear the Mayor\u2019s vision for the year ahead.
\nSitting down with Chamber chair Javed Khan, Mayor Dawe said the strongest draw for businesses coming into Aurora is \u201cthe diversity of our community.\u201d
\n\u201cIt is a very engaged community,\u201d said Mayor Dawe. \u201cMost of the people who live here want to shop here as well, [so] there is that built-in driver.\u201d
\nCurrent movement on Library Square and the development of a \u201cCultural Precinct\u201d in Aurora\u2019s Downtown Core will be a \u201ckick-starter\u201d to renewed focus.
\n\u201cWe talked about downtown revitalization for years and we have always struggled with really defining what that means, and I think that is going to come out of that and be a major boost,\u201d he said.
\nMr. Khan steered conversation towards Aurora\u2019s Business Retention and Expansion (BR&E) strategy, focusing on mounting commercial vacancies throughout Town, an issue the Chamber said they wanted further insight on ahead of last Wednesday\u2019s lunch.
\n\u201cWe don\u2019t want any businesses to fail,\u201d said Mayor Dawe. \u201cYonge Street is destination shopping. If you look at businesses that are successful on Yonge Street (Caruso\u2019s, Klein Home, Benjamin Moore, Fluffy Puppies) [show] you have to have an executable business plan. That is where I think we, along with the Chamber, can work more efficiently, more closely, more positively with individual businesses to say, \u2018Here are some of the services we can provide.\u2019
\n\u201cI have talked to a couple of landlords and there is no landlord who wants empty buildings. That is not why they are in business. [The ones] I have talked to are looking for quality tenants. They don\u2019t want turnover in their buildings and, quite frankly, it can take longer to get that quality tenant. I think what we have to do with the Chamber is focus on getting destination businesses, especially [on Yonge from] Wellington down to Church Street.\u201d
\nA key driver in achieving this, he noted, is the formation of a new Economic Development Board, which will soon come up for Council approval once the terms of reference are reviewed by Aurora\u2019s existing Economic Development Advisory Committee.
\nOver the years, the Mayor, the Chamber, and the Committee have put considerable focus on a new hotel for Aurora as well as coming up with a solution to address some of the problems stemming from the former Howard Johnson\u2019s on Yonge Street, which sits boarded up.
\nWhile the announcement of a hotel in northeast Aurora stole some of Mayor Dawe\u2019s thunder as far as his speech was concerned, he did share some news on Howard Johnson\u2019s.
\n\u201cThere are some steps we\u2019re looking at pursuing that I am not at liberty to speak to at this point,\u201d said Mayor Dawe, responding to Mr. Khan\u2019s question on what Aurora plans to do about that \u201ceyesore.\u201d
\n\u201cWe have put a number of people in touch with the owner of that property and he has an unrealistic sales figure,\u201d continued Mayor Dawe, noting the last figure he did hear was $12 million. \u201cSo, we\u2019re just looking at some options. The Town does go through there on a regular basis and I think they were just in there because there were some people squatting and we are doing what we can.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir Drawing in new \u2013 and fostering existing \u2013 businesses were in the spotlight last week as Mayor Geoff Dawe sat down with the Aurora Chamber of Commerce for a wide-ranging Question and Answer session last week. The Q&A came following the Mayor\u2019s Annual Luncheon, hosted by the Chamber this year at Oakview […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":16595,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/2017-02-23-10.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-4k1","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-14 09:05:59","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16617"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16617\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}