Plans for the revitalization of Memorial Arena have hit a snag, a snag called COVID-19.
When Taskforce Engineering bought the building early this year the idea was to redesign the building and attract retail tenants that would not compete with the Farmers Market.
Director of Engineering Hilary Murphy tells Quinte News it’s more challenging than imagined, with the pandemic occurring.
“It’s a challenge particularly with Memorial to drum up the appropriate interest and try to secure tenancies when we’re dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. What our plans are for that space is really more retail and hospitality. With so much uncertainty with that market it’s just been a bit more challenging to navigate than we ever would have anticipated in January when we were talking about it before. We knew it was aways going to be a challenge.”
She added, “We’re working through that and we’re in the process of developing a website that will give a little more information to the public, to retailers so they can explore the options in some anonymity…we’re working with the city. There’s still some environmental information that they’re working to get to us. Just the due diligence process. We’re still working our way through. We’re hopeful in the coming months we’ll have some more exciting announcements that we can put out to the public.”
Taskforce bought the Memorial and Legion Branch 99 buildings for $900,000.
