By: Deputy Mayor Brenda Hogg
Town of Richmond Hill

"Get Over It"

Over the years I have listened to the laments of how Richmond Hill doesn’t have the same facilities or by-laws or businesses or whatever as some other community in the Greater Toronto Area. Richmond Hill needs to get over its inferiority complex.

Richmond Hill is known as a great location for a family with some of the best schools that the public and private education systems have to offer. When I spoke with municipal leaders in London, England a few years ago, I was told that you could build a penitentiary in a community with little economic impact to the local house values but if you attracted a school with high academic credentials, your housing values could increase by 20%.

International community planners emphasize the attraction of “place”; meaning a destination of interest; a town’s raison d’être if you will. Town Council, residents, and businesses have invested more than $30 million in our historic, downtown core over the past year. Our new Theatre is expected to attract up to 1,800 visitors per week. The question is: will local businesses be ready for them?

Once we confirm the financial contributions of the Federal and Provincial governments, we expect that our transit hub (subway, GO train, YRT and VIVA rapid transit buses) at the Richmond Hill Centre will accommodate up to 80,000 people per day. The anticipated ribbon-cutting ceremony for the subway is 2016 – seven years away.

We are fortunate in Richmond Hill to have a youthful, culturally diverse and highly educated population. Over 45 % of our residents are between the ages of 20 and 49. In fact, Richmond Hill boasts the largest number of highly educated residents in the Greater Toronto Area and since every municipality recognizes that people are our greatest asset; our Town is an ideal place to engage a creative, diverse, highly skilled, and educated workforce. Almost one-third of our households currently have an average, annual income in excess of $100,000. You might recognize some of the company names which have chosen our town for their head office. They include: Black and Decker, BFS Enterainment and Multimedia, Cosmo Music, Fairchild Television, LEGO Canada, Mazda Canada, NuPharm, Rogers Communications (Ontario), Lexmark Canada, Suzuki Canada and we eagerly anticipate the construction of BMW Canada’s head office this year.

Richmond Hill is known by the big players as a place to be – many of them already live here.

Brenda