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BURLINGTON – Burlington will provide wireless Internet access in the city's downtown and at City Park starting in early June.

The idea originated with area merchants and Burlington Downtown Corp., whose executive director said free wi-fi would make the city's downtown more attractive.

"I think that it's going to help make downtown a destination and help create sort of a convivial cafe culture," said Anne Morris.

The city hoped the service would generate more business.

"It'll draw people to restaurants," said Rodger Burden, the city's information technologies director. "They'll be able to sit and have coffee and perhaps on a bench, park bench or something like that."

Burden said wireless Internet access would spell convenience.

"Somebody who wants to check something, a local business or check some movie times, they could sit down here on a bench and pull up the Internet on either a phone or a laptop," Burden said.

Merchants said the service could keep many of their existing customers around longer.

"It would really help accommodate our customers who like to come in and sit and get comfy in here and spend some time and they could surf the Web or even do some work," said Stephanie Pratt, owner of the Perk-O-Later.

It was just the kind of help many small businesses said they would need to bring more people through their front doors.

"We provide the fastest [Internet service] we can right now, but for downtown to do something like this is kind of like an incentive for small business owners in the downtown area," said Angie Ball, owner of Rare Breed Tattoo. "That'll really help out a lot for us."

Burden said the project would cost the city a one-time fee of $75,000 to set up.