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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
The City of Yellowknife provided $41,500 to six businesses over the past year to help fund their efforts to beautify the community.

The businesses - Megsie Development, Guy Architects, Life Care Planning, Bayside Bed and Breakfast, Holy Trinity Anglican Church and Nadji Architects - have received their grants and have put the money to work. A seventh business had to withdraw from the program due to a lack of resources.

Bayside Bed and Breakfast, on McDonald Drive in Old Town, received $8,000 from the city. Efforts there included paving the driveway, landscaping the front of the business and planting 12 birch trees to help beautify the location, according to its owner and manager, Debbie Doody.

Guy Architects, which received the largest proportion of grant funding at $11,000, put the money to use by creating 11 new parking stalls that have been landscaped on its McDonald Drive lot. Two more stalls are being planned, as well.

"They're coming up nicely," said Wayne Guy, principal architect with Guy Architects. "It will be a nice improvement. It's a great incentive by the city."

According to Guy, the company spent close to $24,000 on the upgrades, of which the city contributed $6,000 toward the project based on work completed last year. When remaining work is completed, the business will receive the remaining $5,000, according to Mayor Gord Van Tighem.

Nadji Architects' principal architect, Kayhan Nadji, said his company on Franklin Avenue put its $3,000 towards new exterior windows, paving the front, new flower boxes and planters, and exterior doors.

Life Care Planning chose to use its $8,500 grant to construct a ramp to access the building on 47 Street. Construction is currently underway, but Marion Hutton, owner of Life Care Planning, would not comment on the expected completion date.

Megsie Development co-owner John Williston, who owns the building where the downtown Subway is located, used $4,000 from the city to repave a parking lot and commission an artistic planter, which is expected to be completed in the near future.

"We spent $12,000 on paving and $10,000 on the planter," Williston said. "It's going to be neat, pretty and bullet-proof."

Holy Trinity Anglican Church on 52 Street received a $7,000 grant from the city.

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