Leamington council is signing off on the purchase of a closing uptown tailor shop for $105,000.
Vince The Tailor on Mill St. W is closing because the owner is retiring.
The municipality is going to tear down the shop to create a walkway connecting a parking lot to the businesses on Mill St. W.
Leamington Mayor John Paterson calls the project part of the municipality's continuing effort to revitalize its uptown area. "The end product will make the uptown more walkable," says Paterson. "It'll be a public thoroughfare, for lack of a better word, to connect one to the other."
The project is expected to be completed sometime this summer.
As for future projects, Paterson is not ruling out further municipal purchases in the uptown as part of the drive to reinvigorate the core. "I think those options always remain open. What I suspect you'll see happen, depending on whether we all get re-elected, we'll finish Mill St. this year and in 2019, I think it will be council's push to go after Talbot St. W and Queen St.," he says.