Community Spotlight – Lambton Shores
- Shawn Setyo
- April 29, 2019October 02, 2018
Welcome to Lambton Shores.
On the southern shores of Lake Huron, you’ll be sure to find beautiful beaches, tranquil forests and spectacular sunsets – not to mention one of the more temperate climates available in Canada. You’ll also find the municipality of Lambton Shores, one of the southern-most municipalities in Canada and home to 10,631 Canadians as of the 2016 Census.
Lambton Shores, founded in 2001 after the amalgamation of multiple nearby communities, is a relatively new municipality with fresh attitudes when it comes to improving the lifestyles of its residents. As with all Townfolio communities, interest in our services originated through a desire to increase local economic growth, in turn improving the lives of their residents.
Like many Townfolio communities, as a small municipality, Lambton Shores needed to think outside the box to make astute usage of available budget and boost local economic development. With no formal Economic Development office or Officer in place, but having recently received a grant for Business Retention and Expansion, Lambton Shores began to develop a new strategy.
The Challenge
The main focus of Lambton Shores’ new economic development strategy was to diversify the profile of the municipality beyond “just a tourist town”. Community engagement and activity was already quite successful, with the steady influx of tourism from neighbouring regions of Ontario. However, garnering investment from businesses for year-round economic development had proven challenging in the past – largely because there was no quantifiable way to change this narrative.
With the perception of only being a center for tourism and recreation, how was Lambton Shores going to diversify its economic profile for potential investors? In particular, Lambton Shores wanted to promote its relatively untapped agricultural sector – but there was a struggle to communicate the potential for industry to outside investors. The team at Lambton Shores decided it was time to explore external options.
The Strategy
After a conversation with Hanover, another nearby Townfolio community, Lambton Shores was introduced to the Townfolio platform. They quickly saw an opportunity to efficiently and affordably improve their economic development campaigns.
In particular, the Lambton Shores team loved the Townfolio Export PDF Tool – they could easily automate a digital community profile for online showcasing. The Export PDF Tool is a great starting point for municipalities and communities without a formal Economic Development office or strategy in place for that very reason.
Lambton Shores primarily deployed its Townfolio software as part of its investment advertising strategy. By using Townfolio, Lambton Shores gained significantly greater control over the message they shared with new potential investors and businesses for their municipality. With Townfolio, Lambton Shores was also able to alleviate the difficulty associated with limited Economic Development manpower through automation.
The first step was to create an online community economic profile, available on the Lambton Shores website. One advantage of the Townfolio platform is the ability to constantly deliver the most up-to-date statistics on countless metrics – thus ensuring the community is ready and available for any and all interested investors who happen to be looking for new opportunities.
More importantly, this readily available profile was able to quantifiably show a compelling case for outside investment in multiple industries – in particular, the manufacturing and agricultural sectors show great potential for increased investment. Now, Lambton Shores was able to prove that it wasn’t just a tourist town – in fact, there were genuine opportunities for economic growth in multiple industries.
This newly accessible data, via Townfolio, has given Lambton Shores increased confidence in presenting the municipality to numerous outside investors. In fact, Lambton Shores has now justified the building out of a standalone Economic Development department in their town, of which Townfolio will be a significant component.
The Outcome
Lambton Shores is a great example of how the adoption and implementation of government-specific technology (GovTech) can help municipalities of all sizes leverage greater results within existing means. GovTech allows municipalities and communities to move towards a more resilient and sustainable future.
In the case of Lambton Shores, the Townfolio platform was able to provide supporting data to the initiative of developing the agricultural sector. Beyond that, it even provided insights to new opportunities that weren’t readily visible to the naked eye.
There are so many different methods to implement GovTech into communities across North America, and every situation is different. At Townfolio, we’re passionate about each and every one. We’re constantly striving to make our platform the leader in GovTech, because we care about our communities. It’s our future too.
If you’d like to learn more about how Townfolio can improve your municipality’s economic profile, please explore our website. If you’d like to learn more about our offerings, check out our Platform Features. You can set up a quick demo with me, and I’ll be happy to answer any and all questions you might have. Or, if you’d prefer to email – you can reach me at shawn@jointownfolio.com.
Thanks for reading!