The chair of the Downtown Windsor Business Improvement Association says safety and security will be their focus to improve the downtown core.
Budget deliberations were recently completed with $108,000 being set aside for cameras and monitoring downtown.
Now the DWBIA will work through how to further allocate resources.
DWBIA chair Chris McLeod says through a pilot program they've been running four cameras and got feedback during the town hall held last week.
"One of the residents behind the {Downtown} Mission stood up and basically shouted to the rooftops how much better his area has been since we've had that camera and some mobile security in place. So we really want to build off that initiative and look to roll that out," he says.
McLeod says they have a couple of challenges ahead of them in terms of how exactly the BIA can deploy the resources.
"We've got some budgeting together now. We understand kind of what number of cameras it's going to take. What kind of hours it would take in terms of mobile security," he says. "I would say in the coming months we're really going to be able to elaborate on how we're gonna roll out those resources between us, the local businesses, the City of Windsor, and the police."
McLeod says we need more retail downtown and in order for businesses to invest, he says they need to believe they're going to get a return on investment.
"The BIA has an incentive program to subsidize rent for new businesses downtown. There is an application process but we'll subsidize up to $500 a month, $6000 a year towards a new business opening downtown," he says.
McLeod adds he sees the issues downtown but says he doesn't feel unsafe. He says homelessness, mental illness and drug addiction are struggles that every big city faces.
-With files from AM800's Live and Local