It's become a familiar refrain these days: merchants are concerned for their livelihoods because a never-ending public works project has driven all the customers away.
It’s clear that businesspeople in Olde Towne Okotoks are well aware of these kinds of scenarios, ones that have been repeated in towns and cities across this country, so it’s no surprise they’re heightened to the potential impacts of the Town’s proposed downtown improvement projects.
A disruption to customer access, a loss of parking spaces and an extended construction timeline were all frequently expressed concerns during a consultation process this summer and while there’s no getting around the fact there will be some amount of pain when construction begins sometime next year, it’s up to the Town to minimize that as much as possible.
The fact that civic officials undertook an extensive consultation effort to gauge preferences for the upgrades suggests they understand the need to reduce impacts, but it’s absolutely imperative that day-to-day business carries on as close to normal as possible throughout the construction period.
It's tough enough to be a brick-and-mortar operation these days without having the road out front torn up or all the street parking disappear. Online retailers and big box stores with ample parking lots already pose significant challenges for small owner-operators, so anything else that makes it more difficult for a customer to pay a visit has to be avoided at all costs.
There’s no denying that aging infrastructure needs to be addressed, but the bottom line is that without merchants, we cease to have a quaint downtown. Without them, it becomes a ghost town, and no amount of improvements is going to change that.
Let’s learn from all those cautionary tales in other jurisdictions and make sure that at the end of the project, an upgraded downtown includes a thriving business community.
