Kelowna's Chamber of Commerce says it's fully in support of the province's funding for the Cornerstone homeless shelter, which ran through the winter on Leon Avenue.
But its members aren't so sure of plans to keep it open long-term.
This week, BC Housing confirmed plans to keep the John Howard Society's 80-bed shelter open until the end of May.
Outgoing Chamber President Tom Dyas says downtown businesses want to support homeless shelters, but also want customers to feel safe coming in.
"When they became aware and informed that it was going to look at being extended for potentially a longer period of time within that area, there was great concern on just how that would affect the downtown core, how that would affect the areas around their businesses, how it affects their employees, and how it affects the operations of their business," he said.
The province opened up the old A&B Sound building late last year, and had originally planned to cut funding at the end of March.
Dyas says that while area businesses are supportive of homeless shelters, the amount of people moving through the area is overwhelming to consider long-term, especially through the summer.
He says with the Gospel Mission just down the street, adding Cornerstone year-round would make downtown overly concentrated.
"The concern that we would have is, if it's built within a cluster, if it's all supplied within one specific area, and it's not separated into different parts of the community and throughout the community, then we're basically starting to build an area that would become less and less desirable to be, within our community."
He says the Chamber wants to serve a more complementary role with the city and BC Housing.
"It's not an easy situation to deal with, there's multiple layers in there, so we do applaud everything that they have done. What we want to do is we want to work alongside them," he said.
"We want to communicate what we see, communicate how we can help. There are a lot of good minds at city hall, and in BC Housing, there's a lot of good minds in our business community."
Cornerstone currently takes in 80 people per night.
More affordable housing is expected to be added to Kelowna later this year, in the way of modular homes on Commerce Avenue.