Love Kingston Marketplace, a Limestone City feature, prepares for 2021 relaunch

The Limestone City is getting ready to relaunch its downtown marketplace with the focus on outdoor shopping and dining.

The Love Kingston Marketplace hasn’t officially started yet, but there are already visible signs of it. Concrete barriers have once again popped up on many downtown streets to make more room on those streets and sidewalks for businesses.

Rob Tamblyn is the development manager with Downtown Kingston BIA.

“What we tried to do was get them in place well enough in advance of opening so that the businesses would be able to see what kind of space they have to work with a kind of plan from there,” Tamblyn explained.

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This years barrier setup is very different from last, involving much smaller concrete barriers and concrete planter boxes. Tamblyn says it’s lessons learned from 2020.

“I think that the biggest complaint that we got last year, I guess —  other than the fact that there was probably too many spaces that were allocated and not enough parking — the second biggest complaint that we got was the about the overall aesthetics of the spaces,” Tamblyn said.

But not everyone is happy about the new setup, including Lana LeBlanc, who has run Birds n Paws, a pet store on Brock Street, with her husband for 20 years.

“What I’d like is for this to be removed and another smaller piece that is horizontal to the parking space — not this vertical piece at all,” LeBlanc said.

“In fairness to the DBA, they did sent out an email in the early winter to discuss if we indeed wanted to have a section off in the parking spaces in front of our store. And of course we never want to have that because we provide large bags of food and large items that need to be carried to customers cars close to our store.”

There are, of course, supporters. One of them is the manager of Art Noise, an art supply store on Princess Street. Claudia Zilstra says it’s a lot different from last year.

“They actually left some free parking for us in front of our store, which has been excellent for curbside pickup,” Zilstra says.

“We still have a couple of spaces in front and then that way we can still have a good flow of people moving past. As for before, last year we had everything blocked off.”

Tamblyn says the number one thing when setting up was safety. He says they wanted to create spaces that were inviting for the public but to be safe at the same time.

The Love Kingston Marketplace will officially begin when restrictions are lifted by the province.

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