Hudson business community turns out for special meeting

Hudson - In response to an invitation from Hudson Mayor Elizabeth Corker and the town council, more than 60 business people and commercial property owners came out to a special meeting on Wednesday, October 17 exchange opinions and ideas on preserving and developing the town’s historic commercial centre as an attractive place for local residents and tourists to shop and visit. @R:The three-hour meeting at the Stephen F. Shaar community centre was a beehive of activity as the business people voiced their sweet as honey suggestions for the future, heard the speeches, exchanged opinions, and filled questionnaires, with suggestions on how to revitalize the town centre. Tony Gravina, a retired Sears Canada executive, discussed the operations of big-box stores as Wal-Mart and Sears. John Angus, who owns Le Painier in Pointe-Claire Village, encouraged small business owners to make their operations friendly to customers.

“Hudson needs a long range plan. If you haven’t told them where to go, they will go in all directions,” he said. Alain Carpentier gave a slide show presentation on how “La Fondation Rues Principales” has worked with 200 municipalities in Quebec and New Brunswick. @ST:Working/Planning Committee @R:“This special meeting is being held in all our best interests to decide collectively how to rediscover ourselves, and to decide in a long-term plan what direction to take. When the sewage reconstruction project is completed, commercial property owners will be allowed to maximize their land usage. We hope that people will volunteer to form a working or planning committee”, said Mayor Elizabeth Corker. The meeting had been organized in response to a petition which requested the town to modify its by-laws to discourage offices taking over space from retail space in storefronts on the Main Road. “The fabric of Main Road is quickly changing in a drastic way. The heart and soul of our community is slowly and irrevocably being lost as more and more retail space is taken over by office space”, as written in the petition. It was good news, when a representative from “La Cache” announced that the store is staying in Hudson and not planning to leave. The Hudson Village Theatre brings 15,000 people during the year to the community. @ST:Ideas Suggestions were made that stores should stay open for longer hours in the evenings, because after work, people shop in Vaudreuil-Dorion. “Everyone goes to bed at 5 p.m. in Hudson”. It was also added that an all-year-round market place in the center of Hudson, such as Finnegan’s or to organize special festivals as a Pumpkin contest, Christmas events, set up a central tourist bureau where both residents and visitors could gather, have bus tours and develop a street space around St. Jean and Cameron and architectural reform, to have new houses built suitable to the small town look.