BCBUSINESS.CA APRIL 2019 BCBUSINESS 27
rural Alberta," he maintains.
Deciding not to run again in
Morinville, Fitzgerald moved to
Vancouver, where he became execu-
tive director of the Hastings Crossing
Business Improvement Association
in February 2018. "There's this
perception everyone has of it being
a dark and dirty place," he says of
the Downtown Eastside. "But there's
also a lot of interesting businesses
and community groups and public art
and lots of awesome stuff going on.
So really what I want to do is bring
about a shift in people's attitudes to
the area."
BOTTOM LINE : The Hastings
Crossing
BIA, which Fitzgerald runs
on his own, comprises more than 850
businesses. –N.C.
J A S M I N E M O O N E Y
Owner and managing partner
BANTER ROOM
Partner and director of
marketing and events
HOTEL BELMONT
AGE: 29
LIFE STORY: Whitehorse, Yukon,
is a place you either leave and never
go back to or you never leave, says
Jasmine Mooney of her hometown.
She moved to Vancouver in 2008 to
study marketing and communications
at
BCIT, switching the following year
to Vancouver Acting School.
As an aspiring actress, Mooney
was working in restaurants to make
extra money when one of her patrons,
Pacific Reach Properties president
and
CEO Azim Jamal, suggested she
start her own establishment and
offered to fund it. She approached her
friend Ted Wilkie, then–general man-
ager at the Parlour, to partner with
her. The pair wrote a business plan,
found a location on Mainland Street in
Yaletown and opened Banter Room,
a 90-seat restaurant with a 50-seat
covered patio, in April 2017.
BOTTOM LINE : Banter Room,
which has a staff of 70, earned
$4.65 million and a 22.8-percent profit
in fiscal 2018. Mooney and Wilkie
have repaid their investors and are
looking for a second location. They're
also partners with Azim Jamal on a
new venture, Hotel Belmont (a former
Comfort Inn), scheduled to open in
May at Granville and Nelson streets in
Vancouver. –F.S.
(From left)
Hannah Bernard,
Samantha Ellis,
Melissa Quin,
Brennan Fitzgerald and
Jasmine Mooney
