The Toronto branch of the Urban Land Institute, a global think tank that brings together developers, entrepreneurs, placemakers, academics, urban planners, designers, and architects, was in Prince Edward County last week. The Institute’s mission is to “shape the future of the built environment for transformative impact in communities worldwide.”

I signed up for the tour, which started at Base31 and took in Port Picton, The Royal, Closson Chase, The Drake, and Wander the Resort. A brief stop one afternoon took in the heritage architecture of Picton Main. The Armoury, Gilbert and Lighthall, John’s Barbershop, the Marine Archives, the Gazette building, and Falconer House were on the itinerary, a sampling of the treasures on offer across the County.

Billed “Urban Meets Rural: Transforming Economic Development in Ontario’s Smaller Communities,” the tour showcased the various ways in which a cosmopolitanism associated with the city can be created in unlikely places.

Like PEC used to be.

The Mayor was on hand, as always, to welcome the 40 or so visitors at their first stop, the Sergeants Mess Hall. Steve Ferguson, also as always, turned what could have been a few bland remarks about the importance of tourism and housing into a description of five moments that transformed the County from a slowly fading agricultural community into a destination. 

The County now attracts not just tourists, but, much more importantly, a whole new kind of resident, a creative class making itself felt in striking ways — and evident in the recent doubling of the work-from-home population from 11 percent to 22 percent of the workforce.

The Mayor begain with the wineries, which sparked ideas within the municipality’s forward looking Economic Development Committee for a creative rural economy centered on viticulture, farm-to-table dining, and the rich architectural heritage.

For about 30 years, while the vineyards slowly grew, life here went on much as usual, pursuing a long, slow decline, over short summers punctuated by long, cold winters.

Until the internet came and transformed life as we know it.

In 2015 The Drake opened a Toronto outpost, establishing a new model of luxury tourism, focused on bringing urban sophisticates to its beautiful, beachside setting. In tandem, digital platforms, AirBnB in particular, transformed travel to rural locations around the globe.

Likewise, social media’s “word-of-mouth” effect echoed and amplified the shift to a creative, entrepreneurial tourist economy in the County, which, under Mr. Ferguson’s watch, embarked on one of the first rural STA licensing programs in Canada. That led to the MAT, the accommodations tax, a new revenue tool whose full effects have yet to be felt.

Finally, the pandemic brought 1.5 million visitors in each of 2021 and 2022.

The County is not on anybody’s route. It’s not a place you pass through on your way somewhere else. You must be planning to come here, or you will not find it.

The pandemic put it on the map of the 10 million people that live in proximity — in Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal. The internet changed it into a place not just to visit, but to live.

Remote work, combined with a new emphasis on quality of life, is making the pandemic decade transformative, in the County as around the world.

There’s just one crucial thing missing. Housing. “Housing for All,” as Base31 says. It’s not just a marketing slogan, though of course it is that. It is also a description of exactly what we need.

At the close of his speech, the Mayor flagged a signal element of the transformation of the County into a unique destination with housing for all: heritage investment. The County attracts substantial investments into the inherited structures of a community that has been here for two and a half centuries.

Examples of this twinned effort, both to invent something new and to preserve and enhance the traditions that make the County what it is — a place people can, at the moment, mostly only dream of living in — are all over. From the homeowners drawn by the idea of restoring an old house, or church, or barn, to such major influxes as the Sorbara family’s restoration and renovation of the dilapidated remains of a County mainstay, The Royal Hotel on Picton Main Street.

And now there are the partners at Base31, who will invest hundreds of millions of dollars over the next five years, to bring a once vivid past into a newly inhabitable present. 

They are re-inventing a whole city — not in the sense of a metropolis, but in the ancient sense of the word, which comes from the Latin civitatem, a “community of citizens,” something like a campus, a place that draws people in.

Before the partners at Base31 saw the potential in this languishing, forgotten collection of old barracks and hangars, it was what Tim Jones calls the County’s, not to mention Canada’s, best kept secret. The WWII training school was a National Historic Treasure, moldering away on a barren cliff, stuck out in Lake Ontario, nearly an hour from the 401.

Before the wineries came, the County was stagnant, its population completely flat, in the depression  caused by the closing of Camp Picton in 1969.

That a crew of placemakers, designers, and developers are intent on reviving this many-storied place, turning it into the centrepiece of a series of villages offering multiple new ways of living here, is an unprecedented turn of events. It is, understandably, generating interest, excitement, and concern. There have been slogans without a lot of details. But concrete plans are now emerging; a blueprint for “Village A” has appeared. The promise is of “intentional community,” which combines high design with affordability and sustainability. The effort ought to enhance life here, not diminish it. We can expect leadership in land stewardship and energy use, and real innovation in community design.

I, for one, am keen to see what comes next.