May 17, 2013
At the recent Ontario Business Improvement Area Association (OBIAA) conference in Toronto, a small group of Brussels volunteers was honoured for its work on the town’s recent business retention and expansion survey.
Going up against some of Ontario’s largest cities, with million-dollar budgets, Huron East Economic Development Officer Jan Hawley says she’s proud to see that a small project in Brussels worked on by mostly volunteers came out on top.
The announcement was made at Huron East Council’s April 16 meeting. She says the award gives Brussels “bragging rights” and that it’s validation for all of the hard work she and the volunteer members of the Brussels Build group have been doing.
Hawley says the recognition is especially important now with Brussels recently taking an economic hit with the closure of MDL Doors, one of Huron East’s largest employers. “Brussels was really hit hard in 2010 when this project began with the closure of Brussels Public School and now with the closure of MDL Doors,” Hawley said. “But this community is resilient. They will overcome this adversity. There is just so much potential in Brussels.”
While the award focuses on the recent business retention and expansion survey, Hawley says it was really her work with the window murals and walking trail maps that caught the attention of the OBIAA. Hawley, in a move that came to her in a dream, created murals depicting iconic Brussels scenes in a “then and now” format featuring historical photographs beside recent ones in the windows of buildings that have been sitting vacant for years.
In addition, with the help of a group of students from the University of Guelph, two new walking trails were designed to help showcase all that Brussels has to offer. “It was extremely rewarding to win this award,” Hawley said. “But we weren’t looking for a reward; the reward is the positive change in the community.” Hawley did say, however, that it was nice to be recognized not just by residents, but by her peers in the economic development field.
She says that when she’s being complimented by economic development officers with budgets in excess of $1 million, she knows she’s doing a good job with the resources she has available to her. While Hawley says the award is a success story, she says she has the community of Brussels to thank for that with hundreds of people coming out to a barbecue they held to help attract people to join the Brussels Build organization. She said the barbecue was a huge success and that the momentum just kept gathering from there.
Positives abound in the community in the last year, Hawley says the Brussels Business and Cultural Centre (the former Brussels Public School) hosting the annual Walk, Hike and Wheel Symposium last fall, which highlighted one of the village’s two new walking trails, as well as the creation of the Brussels Farmers’ Market. In addition, Hawley says that a real feather in Brussels’ cap will come in May when the village is featured on Rediscovering Canada Television as part of a film series on rural gem communities across Canada. The segment will be premiered at a screening event at the Brussels Business and Cultural Centre.
This is Hawley’s second win in as many years as her work in the bricks and mortar category in Seaforth was honoured by the OBIAA last year.
More information on the OBIAA can be found at the association’s website at www.obiaa.com
Story by Shawn Loughlin of The Citizen