The Downtown Campbell River BIA – or Heart of the City BIA – covers an area from Pure Martial Arts & Fitness to the Harbourside Inn along Shoppers Row, including the Tyee Plaza. The border of the BIA was extended to include the Harbourside Inn, the Downtown Safety Officer, Budget Car & Truck Rental and 11th Ave. businesses Healthyway Natural Foods, Ocean Mountain Yoga and Cornucopia Books.
The purpose of the BIA is to promote Downtown Campbell River as a vibrant, safe and business-friendly place.
The landowners in this area pay an assessment in their taxes to the BIA. The BIA uses this money for events & promotions, beautification, marketing and other activities to accomplish our mandate.
Events & promotions include our annual Starlight Shopping with the Big Truck Parade, and other events throughout the year such as the Easter Egg Hunt, Downtown Pumpkin Walk and Trick or Treat and the River City Arts Fest. We also sponsor Tuesday Lunches in the Square, Canada Day, North Island Cruisers Show and Shine, and the Angel Tree.
Beautification includes improving lighting, planting and maintaining flower barrels, maintaining downtown cleanliness, maintaining decorative pilings and purchasing decorative banners. We recently refinished the wooden seats and arm rests on Downtown benches, painted the entrances to Impressions Custom Framing and French Creek Collective and wrapped a cement planter in front of the Bank of Montreal with a historic picture of firemen and their trucks from the 1950s. A new bike rack was installed in the Courtyard between the Library and the the Tidemark Theatre. Pictures of local birds and marine life now wrap around aluminum electrical boxes adding more interest and life to our Downtown. A spectacular mural, painted by local artist Alex Witcombe, now graces the wall at the corner of Shoppers Row and 11th Ave thanks to a very successful partnership between the City, the Downtown BIA, the property owner and Discovery College. This fall we can look forward to the mural being lit up!
The BIA also liaises with the City on behalf of Downtown. We advocate on issues such as safety, crime prevention, lighting, parking, flooding, traffic, graffiti, landscaping and facilities maintenance.