Businesses not happy with safe injection site plans

Business owners in Kelowna’s downtown core generally support the idea of a safe injection site but are overwhelmingly against the idea of one close to their businesses.

As Kelowna struggles with an increasingly frightening overdose epidemic, Interior Health has announced potential plans for a safe consumption site on Leon Avenue, next to the Ki-Low-Na Friendship Society.

The supervised site would provide a safe, clean place for drug users to consume illegal narcotics, coupled with outreach and addiction management programs to hopefully steer people away from drug use.

Kelowna Mayor Colin Basran has come out in support of a safe injection site, and Interior Health has lauded their benefits.

But business owners in the downtown core are anything but thrilled with the idea of having one close by.

Luke Menkes of Fair Realty says he totally supports safe injection sites, but that putting one in the downtown core doesn’t make any sense.

“This is the centre of the commercial part of Kelowna. We've got two major banks, the largest law firm in the Okanagan, the largest accounting firm the Okanagan, pubs and restaurants, a family restaurant, all within a half a block. To me the location just makes no sense,” he says.

Menkes says he believes a supervised injection site will bring more drug users to an important commercial area, and that will deter people from coming downtown.

Many other business owners in the area echo Menkes’ concerns.

Jim Belshaw, the owner of Roy’s Shoes, says a supervised injection site on Leon will be “just another excuse to keep people away from downtown.”

“People will be saying, ‘oh cripes, now there’s a free drug thing,’ and people will talk and it will just keep more people from downtown. And we don’t need that: we need more people to come to downtown, and discover downtown,” he says.

“We’re trying to make downtown thrive, and when you hear people talking that they feel unsafe because they hear that there’s a safe injection zone, it’s going to deter them,” Nick Sintichakis, an owner of Tonics Pub adds.

Peggy Athans, the executive director of Downtown Kelowna, points out that Interior Health is still in the consultation phase, and hasn’t decided yet if it will officially submit an application for a safe injection site in that location.

But as Downtown Kelowna continues to provide feedback Athans says the organization is opposed to to the site being located in lower Leon.

She says her organization's “number one priority” over the last few years has been making that area of the city safer for the public, and more attractive to businesses and developers.

“We have serious concerns that a supervised injection site in that area will undermine that process.

“I don’t know what developer would want to develop beside a safe injection site,” she said, saying she thinks a site in that location would be a “roadblock” to revitalization.

Another business owner, who runs a downtown restaurant and wished to remain anonymous, said the priority in downtown shouldn’t be addicts and other people who are making things more dangerous, but the business owners who have worked hard, and invested a lot of money, trying to revitalize the downtown core.

“Everything is about them: everything is about convincing them. Well, what about convincing the business owners?” he said.

Meanwhile, Sintichakis says he has a lot of concerns about how a safe injection site will be policed.

“How is it going to be policed? What is going to happen to the people who come out of the site and into the street under the influence of drugs. Who’s going to take care of them then?” he asks.

Sintichakis also supports the idea of a safe injection site in the city, and said he thinks a good solution would be to put it in the new Interior Health building.

There, he says, there is lots of space, and would provide a safe and supervised place for users to get the help they need.