Revitalizing Brampton: The Brampton Entrepreneur Centre’s Role in Downtown Renewal and Business Recovery
The Brampton Entrepreneur Centre is a leading organization run by the City of Brampton that is helping to lead the revitalization of Brampton’s downtown core and has been instrumental in helping a significant number of start-ups get back up and running since the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. As a pilot in 2019, the centre was originally launched to address the needs of the small business community as a space where they could network and collaborate and grow their businesses. The Brampton Entrepreneur Centre aligned its users’ needs and aspirations by actively involving stakeholders in the planning and implementation process of the new centre, helping it become a place of growth and prosperity for the entrepreneurs in the community. This collaborative approach between the Brampton Entrepreneur Centre, and the business community in Brampton was an effective way to foster a sense of community and belonging among members.
The 2020 pandemic was a difficult challenge, and one in which the downtown small business community in Brampton struggled to recover from because of the reduction in foot traffic of City staff in and around the location. To help restart the Downtown core, The City of Brampton made a bold investment into the Downtown community, and rebranded it as the Brampton Innovation District, which helped to funnel in a new kind of foot traffic which sparked more tourism from international FDI audiences, and growth of high potential start-ups. As an organization in the Brampton Innovation District, The Brampton Entrepreneur Centre became home to many tech and main street entrepreneurs who were looking to start a new business or re-strategize a current/previous business venture which may struggled significantly during the COVID-19 Pandemic.
With the free membership model, the goal of the Brampton Entrepreneur Centre was to help the community get back up on its feet. The organization was able to do so by investing time in business/educational resources, hosting a number of events to boost networking and collaboration among local entrepreneurs, strengthening relationships with our industry partners to better address business recovery, providing COVID-19 recovery consultation services, and much more, to help our clients start and grow their business venture post COVID-19 pandemic. To date, the Brampton Entrepreneur Centre became a hub and currently has a membership of over 700 start-ups and is actively toured by many international professionals/organizations and is viewed as a tourist hot spot in Downtown Brampton. With the Downtown core feeling the effects of hybrid work by City staff, the Brampton Entrepreneur Centre is also able to help funnel a new type of business attraction to the Downtown core.
The Brampton Entrepreneur Centre is building sustainability through a tourism lens, a strong entrepreneurial ecosystem with significant membership base, and supporting the recovery of the reduction in foot traffic in the Downtown core. The Brampton Entrepreneur Centre is not only a space for co-working, but also a space to help spark imagination, build on creativity, and develop a bottom-up approach to community building and collaboration, helping the community recover and grow into the future.
