Townsman, 1991-07, Page 20$60,000 project and gave immediate
approval to the contracts the commit-
tee had approved. The committee
forged ahead with negotiations to buy
the Deilcraft building.
But the headaches and heartaches
weren't behind for the group. The
lessons they had learned from bureau-
crats were learned all over again with
Canada's banking system.
The committee's offer of $200,000
for purchase of the factory from the
Bank of Nova Scotia, which got the
building after the bankruptcy, was
accepted. The committee had $50,000
pledged from community investors
and now went to banks looking for a
mortgage for $150,000 of the total
cost. They felt they had a good case.
The original evaluation of the build-
ing had been $495,000. It had 70,000
square feet of rentable space. They
had a signed contract with one tenant
who's rent would more than pay the
cost of the mortgage. But they
approached three chartered banks, a
trust company and the Federal Busi-
ness Development Bank and were
turned down by each. In some cases
the banks wanted personal guarantees
from the committee members before
they'd approve the loans. The com-
mittee members, three of whom alone
accounted for 600-800 volunteer
hours between them, and with their
own money invested because of the
delays in government money, felt the
extra step was beyond them.
"For us," Bennett says, "it was a
shocking story that this is the state of
banking in Canada."
In the end it was the St. Willibrord
Community Credit Union in Stratford
that stepped in to provide the mort-
gage and MilMor was able to go
ahead and close the deal which had
been delayed, Bennett says, by two
months because of bureaucratic foul-
ups.
"If they had been responsive," Ben-
nett said late in June in talking about
the government hold-up, "we could
have had workers in place by now."
Brailsford -Child says it wasn't as if
Milverton put together a committee
and immediately started asking for
government money: the committee
members put in thousands of hours
18 TOWNSMAN/JULY-AUGUST 1991
Ann Brailsford -Child
Committee members
put in thousands
of hours before
asking for help
and had solid plans in place before
they made a request for assistance.
Meanwhile, the problems behind
them, the committee is seeing the first
concrete fruits of their efforts.
Improvements will be made to the
building throughout the summer to get
it ready for operation. Equipment
owned by the first tenant has been
installed and by the end of summer
manufacturing is expected to begin.
Local investors who want to be part of
the effort have come forward.
By the fall of 1992 MiliMor hopes
25-30 jobs will have been created.
The committee is trying to be realis-
tic, not saying it can replace the 110
jobs lost, Bennett says. "We can't
promise what we can't deliver" he
says.
There isn't a lot of money so people
have to get involved to make the pro-
ject work, Bennett says. Workers have
donated their time to help get the
building in shape.
Bennett hopes other communities
will be able to learn from the Milver-
ton experience to start to take control
of their own futures.
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