Business View Magazine | December 2019

387 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE DECEMBER 2019 WHI TCHURCH-STOUFFV I LLE , ONTAR IO rebuilding our reputation as one that we can be proud of. “On another front, the overarching cloud in Ontario is the governance review and whether or not municipalities will be amalgamated. So, I wanted to create a vehicle for our community that would last, regardless of what happened in a governance review. And that is the Whitchurch- Stouffville Legacy Fund. One of my great joys as Mayor is the ability to leverage my position to raise charitable money. We raised $100,000 at the Mayor’s golf tournament, and $90,000 at the Mayor’s Gala for the Legacy Fund and those will be annual events. Over four years, that’s close to $800,000 for service groups and charities within our community to apply for funding. We have an apolitical board of directors that will get together three times a year, vet the applications, and write cheques. It’s about benefiting our community in perpetuity.” BVM: What are the main economic drivers? Lovatt: “We’re primarily a bedroom community - 70 to 80 percent of our residents get in a car or on the GO Train and leave us, every day. We’ve been a farming community for hundreds of years, but we’re seeing the transition. And farm and greenfield areas are being sold to developers. We do have a couple large businesses in town that employ 80 to 100 people, but we haven’t found an identity yet that we can really promote from an economic development standpoint. We’re working on that. When we are successful in having the Gormley lands open up, we’re going to see millions of square feet of commercial/ industrial come to that area. I’ve had two different investment groups in my office looking for enough land to build half-a-million to a million square feet of warehouse space and we don’t have it in the serviced urban area. “People live in Stouffville because of the lifestyle and they like that you drive through farm fields in every direction to get to us, and when you hit the town, all the amenities