A little lesson in economic development

Jeff Green | Feb 25, 2016

As someone who owns a business that provides a service to other businesses, I have an interest in economic development in Frontenac County.

What I've learned over the years is that business success is more about individual passion and drive than anything else.

In recent months I have been working with some of my staff on a video project that was funded by Frontenac County. We have gone around to 20 businesses and made short promotional videos. Fifteen of them are now loaded on the Frontenac County Youtube channel, which can be reached most easily via a google search (Frontenac County Youtube channel) and the rest are coming. As well, we will be featuring some of those videos in the coming months in the paper.

While the businesses are varied in so many ways there is one thing that ties them together – vision.

This last two videos we shot were at opposite ends of the county and featured very different kinds of enterprise, but there are important common elements.

For one thing, they each have a story to tell, and the businesses are tied in with the lives of the people who run them.

We first went Sunbury's Ormsbee's Mercantile, which is run by Jen Ormsbee. Although her store is only three years old it is located in the former Naish's store, which was a store and lunch shop for decades. Jen took it over after her husband, who runs Ormsbee's Maple Products on their nearby family farm, put forward the idea of buying it when it came on the market a few years ago.

Jen was ready to start working again after their third child was about one year old, and they thought the store would make a good retail outlet for syrup. Jen's idea, and she has followed this through without wavering, was to keep everything that made Naish's store popular, and add to it. At Ormsbee's you can get pop and a bag of chips, but you can also get homemade banana bread (really good banana bread), plus pizza, other baked goods, fresh vegetables and more.

The lunch trade was steady on the day we were there, but Jen said it was one of the quieter lunches all year. In the summer the lineup is out the door.

Ormsbee's does school lunches and catering; they supply syrup to church breakfasts. They do all that needs to be done to keep people coming back day after day even though they are located within 15 minutes of the city limits of Kingston, with its box stores and fast food restaurants.

“People like coming here and we do everything we can to keep them coming back,” said Jen.

After interviewing Jen Ormsbee, we then went across to Inverary, back over Rutledge Road to Road 38, up 38 to Hwy 7, over to Hwy 509 and up to Gully Road at Mississippi Station; then down Gully Road to the new home of Back Forty Cheese and Jenna Rose textiles.

Jeff and Jenna Fenwick moved to the century farm property just last year from Watson's Corners in Lanark County. They have built a cheese factory for Back Forty and upstairs is Jenna's screen printing studio. Under the Jenna Rose label, she prints on fabric, and crafts pillows, handbags, pouches, shoulder bags and more.

Both businesses were already well established and the new location will allow Back Forty Cheese, which produces six varieties of fine raw sheep's milk cheeses, to expand production to meet the demand from high end restaurants and food stores in Eastern Ontario and Toronto. Jeff and Jenna are also keeping animals and maintaining a garden on the property, which ties in with both of their businesses.

They showed us what they've done and talked about what they are planning to do, and talked about what they may or may not do.

Ormsbee's Mercantile, Ormsbee's Syrup, Back Forty Cheese, and Jenna Rose are all very personal. There is no model for them; they spring from an individual passion, and reflect lifestyle choices and a commitment to rural living.

They are similar to other businesses we have looked at in our video series, and which we have covered over the years. In fact they are similar to the Frontenac News itself. Some of them employ a handful or even more people, either full time or seasonally. They all purchase what they can locally, and they all fend for themselves for the most part.

There are economic development committees in two of the Frontenac townships (North and Central) and a new county-wide committee that has an economic development mandate as well. There is also an Economic Development department at Frontenac County, and the Frontenac Community Futures Development Corporation provides direct services to new and established businesses. They all play a role in promoting Frontenac County as a place to do business. It has been a struggle for them to attract the kind of corporate investments that come to larger centres such as Kingston, Napanee and Prince Edward County, and they will continue to struggle.

To a great extent, all that the economic development efforts at the township or county level can do is to help individuals who take a shine to this part of the world to make a go of it here.

The best thing the rest of us can do is find local businesses that we like, and which provide good value-added service at a fair price, and patronize them.

(Note – the above article contains variations of the word business numerous times. Keen readers who can correctly tell us how many times that word appears will be eligible for a draw to win our Lenten word prize contest. The prize is $10 - cash money - but the recipient has to promise to spend the money at a local business.)