Occupy Vancouver gives inadvertent boost to downtown shops

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VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – Could profit be an off-shoot of the Occupy Vancouver protests?

Some downtown businesses actually saw a boost to sales this weekend with protesters flooding the core.

Charles Gauthier with the Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association says only a few stores saw a drop.

“I think part of that was that we saw 5,000 additional people downtown,” he tells News1130. “We did hear from some of our coffee shops that they were extraordinarily busy. Some of the food courts were very busy in the downtown core as well.”

He says he hasn’t heard of any attacks or boycotts on stores.

“You know we’re not a headquarter city, we’re not Wall Street,” he says. “A lot of our businesses are quite small, about  90 per cent hire fewer than 20 employees. I think it’s the nature of what our city is all about.”

But at least one attraction did see a decrease. The Vancouver Art Gallery, where the protestors are camped, saw a significant weekend dip in numbers.

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