Team Cornwall played host this morning to the city of Cornwall’s 2009 Year in Review held at Aultsville hall, located on St. Lawrence College campus.
Gilles Latour Chair of Team Cornwall was the MC of the event which saw MP Guy Lauzon, MPP Jim Brownell and Mayor Bob Kilger in attendance.
The key note speaker was Bob Koehler who is renowned around North America as a motivational speaker.
To increase crowd enthusiasm, Koehler was brought in from his hometown of Fonthill, Ontario.
The self proclaimed VP of enthusiasm of his one person company, Koehler shared his belief that what it takes to
be a successful individual and corporation is enthusiasm.
For the past 23 years Koehler has been travelling around North America improving the way companies such as Kodak, Canadian Tire, and Environment Canada do business.
“My job is to encourage individuals and corporations to be the absolute best they can be,” said Koehler.
Koehler also said that Cornwall is one of the few communities he has seen that “gets it” when he said, “As good as Cornwall is you keep getting better.
You wouldn’t believe how many people don’t understand the importance of that. It is the purpose to life, to make a difference everyday and to progress and to move forward.”
After Koehler was finished with his “pep talk”, it was time for the City of Cornwall Economic and Development manager Mark Boileau to grace the stage and talk about this past year’s progress.
2009 saw a record year in construction with 160 million dollars in revenue.
“The Cornwall and Area Community hospital project, a very important one locally broke ground this year. This is a
119 million dollar project,” said Boileau while running down his list of ongoing projects throughout the community. Another project in the works is the OPG information center. This is an 8 Million dollar project that will be completed in 2010.
The biggest project that the city of Cornwall obtained this year was the Shoppers Drug Mart Distribution Centre.
“With this project we almost changed the name of the city to Shoppers.
This building will be a 55,000sf distribution centre that is valued at over 60 million dollars and will create 130 jobs,” said Boileau
Boileau also pointed out that local company’s such as Grant Marion and the Thompson Rosemount Group have played a major role in many of the new construction projects in Cornwall.
Tourism in Cornwall was also successful this year as 37 conventions, sports tournaments and special events occurred this year. This contributed 10.7 million to the local economy.
The yearly Cornwall Lift Off festival was a major contributor to the tourism numbers this year, as it brought in 4.2 million dollars into the local economy over its three day event.
Other Projects to look forward to in the future include the much talked about 3+1 Multi-Sport Facility. Also St. Lawrence College will receive a much needed face lift as the 10 million dollar redevelopment program will begin in 2010 to the Moulinette Building.
Overall things appear to be looking up in Cornwall. As the rest of the world is struggling with tough economic times, Cornwall continues to attract new companies to the area. Another positive for Mark Boileau and the City of Cornwall is that residential development was higher this year then in the previous three combined.
(Photos courtesy of Markus Noé)
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