A ribbon cutting ceremony was held in downtown Mission on Thursday morning to celebrate the completion – or near completion – of the construction/beautification project.
Mission council members, MLA Simon Gibson, MP Jati Sidhu along with construction workers and local merchants all took part in the brief ceremony.
“It’s truly a historic day for downtown Mission,” said Carlo Billinger, vice-president of the Mission Downtown Business Association (MDBA).
“We’ve really wanted this to happen for a long time. You look around us here, there is two years of planning and work that has gone into this, but decades of brainstorming… We are very grateful to mayor and council for promising and delivering. We had a lot of promises, but not a lot of delivering so I’m really impressed by that,” added Billinger.
Mission Mayor Randy Hawes told the crowd he’s tired of hearing people say that downtown isn’t safe. He called Mission’s downtown one of the safest downtown of any city in this province.
“Let’s just make sure that we dispel that kind of nonsense. This is an extremely safe place to be. And we have lots of new merchants. There’s lots of reasons to be downtown,” said Hawes.
Jamie Hayes, executive director of the MDBA admitted that she cried when she found out council had voted unanimously to move ahead with the revitalization project.
“I came into this late in the game, but a lot of these merchants have been here for decades waiting for this.”
The project cost approximately $4.2 million.