By owning or leasing in a commercial building here in the HxBIA district, you’ve invested yourself in this community in a number of ways. One of which is by paying into the levy to fund the work of the Hastings Crossing Business Improvement Association. Since our BIA was established 5 years ago, your money has been put to work, helping to bring about a number of major achievements.

We started small, with the smallest levy amount of all 22 BIAs in Vancouver. We wanted to show how innovative we could be, the range of partnerships we could form, and the types of programming we could create that would serve a diverse area facing very complex challenges and opportunities. With only a $100k base budget to serve 500 businesses and 200 properties we have done what we set out to do, prove the model and build a foundation on which to grow. Some people didn’t think we would be able to start any BIA, let alone Canada’s first Social Innovation BIA here. We did, and we started strong.

This September 24th, we will be asking you and your fellow BIA members to approve an increase to the budget to take this work to the next level. Join us for our Annual General Meeting at The Pint. More details to come!

We hope that you will continue to invest in a cleaner, safer and culturally vibrant business district by approving our 2016-2017 budget. We have only just begun.