We could see a lot more businesses in Stratford staying open later.
As part of Stratford Tourism’s Always On Campaign, the Stratford City Centre Business Improvement Area is gauging the interest of its retail members to see which ones would be interested in staying open later from Tuesday to Saturday in July, August and September.
The hope is the businesses will stay open until 8 p.m. but Stratford BIA Chair Rob Russell says he’d be happy to see them stay open even a little bit later to help serve the summer crowd.
He says the 8 o’clock time frame comes from the input of many community partners.
“We did a poll of several different organizations from tourism, several of our members in the BIA as well as the Stratford Festival just to see what they had been hearing, BNB’s as well, as far as a time so it was kind of a culmination of things and we arrived at 8 o’clock as being like the sweet spot.”
Russell adds they sent out a call to members on Sunday to see which ones are interested in staying open later and they will take thge information gathered over this week and then decide the best way to promote the later hours in time for it to begin in July.
