Today the Belize City council held a Business Improvement Area workshop at the Radisson. The main idea of the workshop is to educate members of the private and public sector about the Business Improvement Area and how it can benefit the business community and residents of Belize City. It is a part of the House of Culture's and City Council's rejuvenation project and Mayor Bradley told us how this component will work to enhance the commercial and overall economic performance in the city.
Darrell Bradley, Mayor - Belize City
"This is an idea that comes from CARILED which is the Caribbean Local Economic Development Project. Which is a project that we're working in collaboration with a Canadian municipal association to really develop the concept which is very vibrant in Canadian cities and the facilitator today is talking about examples that are in Ottawa in Canada. Essentially what it is, is a business improvement area where the stakeholders, particularly business owners and community agents within the community look at areas where they can develop their space for increase economic activity. So we are looking at things where we can do special tax concessions, we can look at areas of beautification, draining and issues which are of concern for people in the downtown. Looking at security, parking - so that what it is at the end of this workshop, we would want to get a working group, so that we could look at setting up by legislation, a business improvement area as a pilot project in the downtown. We are saying that this is a template that has worked in other municipalities, of course we are very different from Canada, but I think that there is a lot of similarities that we can look at in the downtown. And if we get all the stakeholders together to really look at this, collaborate, 'belizeanize' it in a sense, in terms of the model, I think that this is a successful fit."
Abil Castaneda, Chief Tourism Officer
"The BIA is, for us, a Business Improvement Areas, obviously a new concept for Belize and I think it's a worthwhile model to look at. From our perspective at the Ministry of Tourism, along with our agencies: NICH and BTB, we have from since 2008-2009, been trying see what exactly we could do to boost the economic growth and development of downtown of Belize City as a main economic hub for the country."
The City Council is collaborating with the Caribbean Local Economic Development Organization in Canada for this project.
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