The Orangeville BIA (Business Improvement Area) has a mandate to build a strong downtown business area and recognizes the Blues & Jazz Festival as “the” event that brings visitors and tourists alike to our wonderful Heritage downtown and surrounding areas.
The partnership built between the BIA and the Blues & Jazz Festival has ensured the success of the event through funding, our Market on Broadway farmers’ market which runs from 8am-1pm the Saturday of the festival and BIA continually markets the festival through newspaper articles and advertisements, joint promotions with Headwaters Tourism and the Town of Orangeville, and through its own website as well as references through the websites of other supportive organizations.
In addition to this fantastic event designed to attract visitors to Orangeville, the BIA also funds general improvements to the area: improvements such as new street signs/decor, well-designed rubbish bins that suit the 19th century nature of Broadway, and the summer plantings that brighten the streetscape. The Blues & Jazz Festival, along with the beautification initiatives that start the first weekend of June in line with the festival, are sponsored by the BIA and contribute to the creation of a town that has become a tourist destination.
When you look back at Orangeville’s history and development you can see that the BIA is carrying on a tradition that dates back to Orangeville’s earliest days. From the 1860s on local business owners discussed the need for the incorporation the village, the construction of a new town hall, opera house and library in the 1870s, the move from village to town status in 1874, and the ongoing need for the creation of a separate county that in 1881 finally became the County of Dufferin.
Today the businesses and merchants of the Orangeville BIA, working in close co-operation with the Town of Orangeville, Dufferin Chamber of Commerce, and Headwaters Tourism, continue the work of creating and promoting a town that could one day in the not-too-distant future again lay claim to being “unequalled anywhere in the province”......and very proud to be the “Home of the Orangeville Blues & Jazz Festival”
