An entrepreneur promised to prioritise the people of Hamilton should he be elected mayor of the city.

Elmore Warren and Michael Branco are vying for the mayoral position and registered their candidacies last month.

Mr Warren ran as an independent candidate in the 2017 General Election, but is running for mayor for the first time.

He said others urged him to run for the position and have supported him throughout the process.

Mr Warren, chief executive of Fresh Creations, has lived in Hamilton his entire life, but thinks parts of it have lost their unique culture through the years.

He explained: “I grew up when the culture of Front Street was about going downtown with a family and walking, window-browsing, running around Albuoy’s Point, getting some food, sitting off and fishing — that was the culture. That is gone.

“Now Front Street has become a dearth of any visible culture that a tourist can come and actually say ‘this is the pinnacle of Bermuda’.”

Mr Warren believes this could change if the city would work with retailers to become “more profitable, more serving, more fun and more exciting, so people can see something and be inspired”.

He explained: “We didn’t do anything to embellish our retail products, not just from an internal perspective, but from the Corporation of Hamilton’s perspective. They were more penalising than anything to the retail business.”

Mr Warren also served on the Bermuda Tourism Authority board and vowed to invest in Hamilton’s “human capital” if elected.

He said: “If we don’t take care of people, the city will dwindle away and die, the people are going to be in concrete jungles, they’re going to be making a billion dollars, local companies are going to struggle and hurt, and Bermudians are probably going to get fatter than ever … because food is the third pillar of our economy.”

Mr Warren added: “If people are our biggest asset, why haven’t we embellished that, why haven’t we really attacked that with some care, so that we can look at the different levels of people that are using the city, address each one according to their needs and then give them the choices that are amenable for all of us to progress?”

He does not think Charles Gosling, the outgoing mayor who served in the role from 2008 to 2012 and then since 2015, has addressed infrastructure, vagrancy, decline of retail or other issues within the city during his tenure.

He said: “I know how to motivate people, I do the things that inspire people to actually do for themselves and be proud. Tell me what [Mr Gosling] has done that’s made anybody do that.”

Mr Warren urged Hamilton residents and business owners to make their voices heard tomorrow.

He said: “Don’t be disenchanted. Take a chance every time because, you never know, you just might pick the right guy.

“We have voter apathy. All I need to do is get rid of that and bring some sense of hope to the voter so they will come out and vote.”