SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING TO DEAL WITH INCENTIVES

A special meeting is being arranged for later this week for quick city council approval of an ambitious incentive plan intended to get a developer to move forward with a downtown project. The downtown Community Improvement Plan was supposed to come to council for final approval in early October, but Mayor Drew Dilkens told councillors Monday that it’s important to get it approved more quickly. “We’re working on an economic development file that that program certainly would be beneficial for,” was all he would tell reporters after the meeting of council’s executive committee. The CIP, several years in the making, has 39 recommendations focused on reviving the downtown by attracting hundreds of people to move there. It calls for grants to landlords to create residential space in both existing buildings and new structures as well as grants and tax breaks for improving facades and renovating commercial buildings. Money would also be made available for turning alleyways into safe, clean pedestrian thoroughfares. The CIP has already been recommended by council’s planning, heritage and economic development standing committee. Dilkens said he expects little opposition to the plan. The special meeting will probably be Friday. There has been virtually no residential building in the downtown for more than a decade and downtown boosters say that more residents is the key ingredient needed for a downtown revival. Several local developers have said the incentives are crucial to their downtown projects going ahead.