Darrin, I always appreciate your balance and how you really try to see the big picture. I agree with your assessments, and I do think there is a place there for adding increased crime management to your list. All of these things play a part in the demise of a business. Each of us will likely weight one or another factor over the others, but there's rarely a single cause.
I especially agree with you that shaming people is not going to change behaviour, at least long term. Shaming just serves to make people feel lousy, and it doesn't improve our downtown. What about the opposite, though? Motivation. How do we motivate people to care? The trillion dollar question for civic engagement. For everything from voter turnout to sitting on civic committees, civic engagement *can* give people a rounded perspective and help to prevent the monocausal assessments that prevent us from taking a deep dive into the search for improvements.
I feel that as long as people aren't engaged / are apathetic / overwhelmed, it's way harder for our politicians to do their jobs. (And I don't mean keyboard warrior engaged, I mean showing up in person engaged.) And that in turn makes it harder for all of these "ifs" that you posted about. IF people were generally more engaged, we might get wider sidewalks, more greenspace, cleaner downtown, better lighting, etc etc.
After speaking with Vilma, her stance is that it can be framed less as shame and more as a challenge and I like that framing more but it still falls short of the kind of pressure needed to be exerted to make REAL, lasting change.
Motivating people to care THEN making sure they're caring about the right things - you're correct, that's the big challenge to overcome.
Not to be too simplistic but I think the intervention has to come with funding because there are many people at city hall who see these things and feel these things - but they're handcuffed to a budget that only has a few cm of wiggle room. I think, if there is a way out, it will have to come in the form of corporate sponsorship.
Honestly as a big Birch and Boar supporter and as a person who actually truly loves our downtown, their business started to change a lot in the last little while and stoped being a draw for me. Huge price increases (which I can understand, because my food bills at home are going up big time too), but also way less of the local meat and other home cooking things that I loved. The last time I went in I bought nothing and I had planned on buying sausages for dinner. I'm sorry to hear of all their challenges and I also think they messed up their re-brand.
I think there's a kind of death spiral that happens to businesses that can sometimes look like poor decisions when really, they're just thrashing in the water for survival. Fewer sales can mean buying less in bulk which can mean prices go up, and hours of availability go down. Fewer hours open and higher prices leads to even fewer sales. This kind of decision making goes on for months, maybe a year - I think, without knowing for sure, some of that was happening at B&B and it led to people perceiving the tail spin as bad ownership which I don't believe is the case.
The re-brand felt so misguided! Pivoting to sandwich shop and essentially needing to directly compete with wall of fame just gets a headshake from me. I am a deli freak and I was SO happy that I could get things there without having to drive to foothills deli, and now, i'm back to driving across town to foothills deli.
I recently read virtual clearcut by Brian fawcett. There’s a passage in there where he writes that when Northern Hardware closes down that’ll be it for downtown PG. I’m still not over that one, but it was really interesting to read a book that was written in 2001, about the state of Prince George and ‘what to DO about downtown’ and i found it really validating in a way. This has been a familiar cry for as long as I can remember growing up here. Every time I business closes its the same echoes and I’m not trying to dismiss it but clearly, something is not working. I really appreciate the points you bring because it is not ONE thing. It’s a lot of all of the things.
(But seriously fuuuuuck the downtown parking system. So much ire from me on that one)
But it's that terrible feeling of realizing a document from decades ago has outlined many of the problems (and many of the solutions) and we're just stuck in a Sysaphus-pushing-boulder-up-hill situation for all of time. It sucks.
Darrin, I always appreciate your balance and how you really try to see the big picture. I agree with your assessments, and I do think there is a place there for adding increased crime management to your list. All of these things play a part in the demise of a business. Each of us will likely weight one or another factor over the others, but there's rarely a single cause.
I especially agree with you that shaming people is not going to change behaviour, at least long term. Shaming just serves to make people feel lousy, and it doesn't improve our downtown. What about the opposite, though? Motivation. How do we motivate people to care? The trillion dollar question for civic engagement. For everything from voter turnout to sitting on civic committees, civic engagement *can* give people a rounded perspective and help to prevent the monocausal assessments that prevent us from taking a deep dive into the search for improvements.
I feel that as long as people aren't engaged / are apathetic / overwhelmed, it's way harder for our politicians to do their jobs. (And I don't mean keyboard warrior engaged, I mean showing up in person engaged.) And that in turn makes it harder for all of these "ifs" that you posted about. IF people were generally more engaged, we might get wider sidewalks, more greenspace, cleaner downtown, better lighting, etc etc.
Thanks Kathy - I appreciate that.
After speaking with Vilma, her stance is that it can be framed less as shame and more as a challenge and I like that framing more but it still falls short of the kind of pressure needed to be exerted to make REAL, lasting change.
Motivating people to care THEN making sure they're caring about the right things - you're correct, that's the big challenge to overcome.
Not to be too simplistic but I think the intervention has to come with funding because there are many people at city hall who see these things and feel these things - but they're handcuffed to a budget that only has a few cm of wiggle room. I think, if there is a way out, it will have to come in the form of corporate sponsorship.
Honestly as a big Birch and Boar supporter and as a person who actually truly loves our downtown, their business started to change a lot in the last little while and stoped being a draw for me. Huge price increases (which I can understand, because my food bills at home are going up big time too), but also way less of the local meat and other home cooking things that I loved. The last time I went in I bought nothing and I had planned on buying sausages for dinner. I'm sorry to hear of all their challenges and I also think they messed up their re-brand.
I think there's a kind of death spiral that happens to businesses that can sometimes look like poor decisions when really, they're just thrashing in the water for survival. Fewer sales can mean buying less in bulk which can mean prices go up, and hours of availability go down. Fewer hours open and higher prices leads to even fewer sales. This kind of decision making goes on for months, maybe a year - I think, without knowing for sure, some of that was happening at B&B and it led to people perceiving the tail spin as bad ownership which I don't believe is the case.
The re-brand felt so misguided! Pivoting to sandwich shop and essentially needing to directly compete with wall of fame just gets a headshake from me. I am a deli freak and I was SO happy that I could get things there without having to drive to foothills deli, and now, i'm back to driving across town to foothills deli.
I recently read virtual clearcut by Brian fawcett. There’s a passage in there where he writes that when Northern Hardware closes down that’ll be it for downtown PG. I’m still not over that one, but it was really interesting to read a book that was written in 2001, about the state of Prince George and ‘what to DO about downtown’ and i found it really validating in a way. This has been a familiar cry for as long as I can remember growing up here. Every time I business closes its the same echoes and I’m not trying to dismiss it but clearly, something is not working. I really appreciate the points you bring because it is not ONE thing. It’s a lot of all of the things.
(But seriously fuuuuuck the downtown parking system. So much ire from me on that one)
I know that feeling super well. I think I wrote about it in this newsletter:
https://darrinrigo.substack.com/p/are-official-community-plans-a-waste
But it's that terrible feeling of realizing a document from decades ago has outlined many of the problems (and many of the solutions) and we're just stuck in a Sysaphus-pushing-boulder-up-hill situation for all of time. It sucks.