BIA Says Goodbye to Planning Street Party

The Williams Lake Street Party is a no go at least for the Central Business Improvement Association.

The WLCBIA issued a press release this morning saying goodbye to planning the event.

Chairperson Angie Delainey says the Board sat down together back in November and looked at their strategic planning.

“Our direction sort of has been with this new board is to move away from hosting events and to look more into governance and creating partnerships. Street Party requires quite a bit of work to pull off and nobody wanted to chair it and nobody wanted to be part of the committee.”

Delainey says when speaking with the actual merchants of the downtown, the party is not well received.

“We are bringing in out of town vendors because our own merchants don’t have the infrastructure to be able to set-up and take down in the streets.”

Delainey says they also felt that the time and energy required to put in for the 4-hour event was not an effective use of their time.

The BIA is currently in the process of remaking themselves so that can serve downtown property owners in new ways including hosting a meeting during the first of March to share ideas on how to breathe life into the downtown core.

“I think there are a lot of different things we could look at doing,” says Delainey.

“Again It comes back to time, manpower, and participation. We’ve kind of toyed around with the idea of doing what we called August Summer Nights-looking at bringing in some music downtown and some booths and having some little happenings over the course of the month of August versus just a one day or a weekend thing.”