County of Brant Council heard from a Paris business owner about the devastating financial impact of the Downtown Dig during their Administration and Operations Committee meeting on Tuesday, July 21, 2026.
Emery Silva, owner of Bird and Bee Vintage and Le Petit Marché, asked the County to put a pause on the project during her delegation to Council.
Silva said that while infrastructure improvements may be necessary, she, among other downtown businesses, needed a break from back-to-back construction seasons.
“I understand that infrastructure improvements are necessary, and I recognize that construction is something unavoidable,” she said. “But the reality for businesses operating through this prolonged disruption has been extremely difficult.”
Silva went on to say that while her business had consistently matched or improved on its annual revenue over the ten years leading up to the Downtown Dig, the prolonged construction has since affected that success. Having provided the Council with sales figures from 2024, 2025 and 2026 to date, she said her business was experiencing an approximate 40 to 50 per cent drop in sales.
“Last year alone, during the construction months, my business lost approximately $74,000. This year, we are on track to experience the same or a similar loss,” she said. “In black and white, this is what my business is actually experiencing. …These are not simply numbers on a spreadsheet. They represent the cumulative impact of reduced traffic, disrupted access, construction fatigue, and ongoing uncertainty that businesses have had to absorb for an extended period of time.”
Putting the loss into perspective, Silva compared the Downtown Dig’s impact on local businesses to the challenges faced during the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite having to close for nine months over a two-year period, her business experienced record sales during that time.
“Our town benefited from an incredible increase in tourism as people looked for places that they could visit closer to home, and when we were allowed to open, we saw tremendous gains,” she explained. “We were able to make up for the losses we experienced during the closures because people were here, they were visiting, and they were supporting local businesses. That taught me something very important about short periods of relief: that they can make a difference to a business.”
The business owner went on to say that the ongoing construction has affected Paris’ once booming tourism industry.
“When our downtown is difficult to access, navigate, or enjoy, it affects the experience of visitors and can discourage people from coming and returning,” Silva stated. “Paris has always been known as one of the prettiest little towns in Canada, and certainly one of the prettiest in Ontario. But the beauty of Paris has never been just about how the streets look; it’s about our character. Over the past two years, I believe we have lost some of that image. The Big Dig branding and dust bowl atmosphere have overshadowed our identity as a town.”
Silva admitted that she sold her house last year to help offset some of the losses her business had taken on, believing it would be enough to get her through this year.
“I don’t think I wasn’t counting on taking the same kind of hit this year, and I don’t think any of the businesses downtown were either. At some point, you can only absorb so much loss, you can only cut so many costs, and ask so much of the people around you before there’s simply nothing left,” she said. “I’m not asking for a pause because construction is inconvenient. I’m asking for a pause because businesses need an opportunity to recover before they’re pushed to the point past recovery.”
Silva continued, “We support the long-term goal of improving our downtown, but we also need to ensure that the businesses that make up the heart of our downtown are still here to benefit from that future. I respectfully ask for you to move forward with a pause in construction next year. Give our businesses a chance to recover. Give our community a chance to breathe. Because when this project is finished, the beauty of our town won’t come from wider sidewalks or lamp posts. It will come from the people who fill those sidewalks and storefronts. It will come from the unique character and soul that has made Paris a destination in the first place.”
Council members also thanked her for her contributions to the community, including the recent painting of four storefronts along Mechanic Street, and for sharing the reality of being a business owner at this time.
Following her presentation, David Mellor, General Manager of Operations for the municipality, confirmed that the County was planning on taking a pause in downtown construction in 2027.
“We’re still working through what exactly a pause looks like in a sense of doing an additional year of planning. There may be some investigation work that we want to do so that we can move faster in future years,” he said. “There’ll be more information on that to come in late August or early September of exactly what 2028 and 2029 look like in our plans.”
Kimberly De Jong’s reporting is funded by the Canadian government through its Local Journalism Initiative.The funding allows her to report rural and agricultural stories from Blandford-Blenheim and Brant County. Reach her at kimberly.dejong@brantbeacon.ca.
