Katharine Brown and Richard Courneyea address Belleville City Council on behalf of the BDIA, on May 9, 2016. (Photo: David Foot / Quinte News)
Belleville Council has decided to help out downtown business owners, by committing money for a “pop-up mall” in the old Brick building on Pinnacle Street.
The city will commit $20,000 to the project, plus HST, to give businesses affected by the downtown construction somewhere else to sell their goods and services while work is being completed.
Katherine Brown of Kate’s Kitchen tells Quinte News they’d like to have the store open by June 1st and there is plenty of work to be done before then, but preparations are already underway.
And she says the idea itself is strengthening partnerships between downtown business owners.
Brown says at this point about nine businesses have expressed interest in setting up a pop-up shop, but she hopes they can attract as many as 15.
While agreeing to give out the pop-up mall cash, council turned down another request from business owners, to pay interest on loans from Trenval.
Most councillors felt it shouldn’t be up to the taxpayers to foot that bill.
