The Community Improvement Program for Leamington's uptown is seeing limited success despite the municipality offering up big bucks.
"I'm not disappointed, but I'm not as happy as I would hope to be," says John Paterson, Leamington's mayor speaking to BlackburnNews.com.
Property owners have taken advantage of just $262,895 of the $754,000 available over the last four years.
"I knew in the initial couple of years the uptake would be slow, but I was hoping by year four it would be much better," says Paterson.
Despite the slow uptake, Mayor Paterson feels progress has been made.
"I'm still not disappointed because we've had some success and you just need to go to certain areas of the uptown and you can see what those business people have done with their properties," says Paterson.
The municipality was set to invest $1.359-million over five years in the CIP meant to help revitalize the uptown area. However, the slow uptake meant less money was needed.
This year will be the last for the CIP and council has voted to remove a number of restrictions to encourage more applications. Paterson adds council will review a possible extension of the CIP or a new program altogether.