Warwick hosts business event

The head of the Sarnia-Lambton Chamber of Commerce wants to make sure rural businesses don’t feel forgotten.

The Chamber rolled into Watford Thursday evening for a mixer, hoping to bring Sarnia business people to the Warwick Township community to see what they have on offer. And Carrie McEachran hoped to attract new chamber members from Watford.

“What we’ve heard since I’ve started at the chamber from rural businesses is that they feel that they have been forgotten about by the chamber and really they are not feeling that they get the support that people within the city do,” she says. “So that’s a big goal of ours… to get out to all the municipalities and get to know the businesses.

“There’s a lot of unique needs and challenges with rural businesses that others aren’t feeling,” said McEachran adding “we would love to see more interaction between the Sarnia businesses in the rural businesses.”

About 20 people registered to attend the event with another six businesses and organizations showcasing their products.

Warwick Township Mayor Todd Case is happy for the opportunity to showcase Watford and to explain how the township’s business community is growing.

“We’ve had eight new businesses in the last year and a half. And one thing we’re very proud of is that our Main Street in another month will be 100 per cent populated, so all our main street businesses will be populated.

“We haven’t seen that probably for over 50 years here.”

And Case says the community is poised for residential growth. “We have three developments on the go right now. We hope to see all three of them break ground next year. So again, what does business need? They need support. They need people to obviously, be customers, and we see a great opportunity for residential growth in the next year, two years as well. So things are going well here, and we’re attracting attention.”