Prospective Market Place tenants tour former Memorial Arena

The former Memorial Arena in Belleville opened its doors on Thursday to prospective tenants for the new Memorial Market Place.

About 20 prospective tenants had a chance to step into the historic arena and view plans for the proposed two-storey market place.

Hilary Murphy of Taskforce Engineering, that bought the arena from the city last January, tells Quinte News, “The response has been fantastic. It’s been a lot of local companies, established companies, and entrepreneurs that have come through and the response has been tremendous. To the space and what the vision and the plans are. The enthusiasm for the vision and the overall project and really, really positive.”

The plan is to begin demolition in the new year, but Murphy says, “that depends on tenant sign-up.”

A partner in the project, Robert Brown of Osprey Bay Holdings, says the response to the open house was “fantastic with lots of prospective specialty tenants showing up.”

“Those are the types of tenants we’ve been meeting with and there’s many more we want to talk to. We want this to be an exciting destination that people from all around the County and the GTA will come and visit and want to spend the day here.”

Brown added, “We had a great young couple … they grow their own garlic. It wouldn’t be just a normal produce shop it, would have Ontario garlic homegrown in the area. We met a fishmonger who was just amazing again. They would offer all the same seafood products you would find in a grocery store except they have a lot of locally caught pickerel, whitefish, and perch. So they would have, again, a destination product that you wouldn’t find elsewhere.”