Bear Street merchants are trying to come up with a plan to boost the number of shoppers and diners to their shopping district in the face of higher than usual retail vacancy rates.
At least one businessman, Miles Kennedy, is pressing the Town of Banff to do a better job of directing traffic from Banff Avenue to Bear Street, perhaps through increased signs and retail directories.
“The Town’s done a fairly good job of dolling up Bear Street, but there’s not much point dressing it up if people don’t know it exists,” said Kennedy, whose wife owns Four Dangerous Dolls.
“Bear Street is the second major shopping district in Banff and yet it gets only 17 per cent of the foot traffic that Banff Avenue gets. Something needs to be done to get more people there.”
Arctos & Bird Management, owners of Bison Courtyard, are also keen to see foot traffic increased for Bear Street, indicating doubling average foot traffic in peak and shoulder seasons would be a good target.
They’ve offered $5,000 to a marketing pool – based on $1,000 per occupied lot at Bison Courtyard, provided other businesses contribute the same amount for each occupied lot to create a seed fund for joint marketing.
Kennedy said he would like the Town of Banff to install retail directories in the downtown core, similar to the ones used at street corners in Ottawa’s Byward Market area, directing visitors to Bear Street.
“Tourists visiting Banff might discover that there is more to the town than Banff Avenue if one of these was erected at each end of Banff Avenue, and even at each end of Bear Street,” he said.
“Something like this would be complimentary to the efforts that the Town is making to improve the Bear Street experience and, most importantly, it would inform them that Bear Street exists as an option for shopping and dining.”
Several Bear Street merchants have closed up shop in recent times, and there are currently about six stores vacant on the street, and more in the two indoor malls.
Some of the closures in more recent times include District, Avalanche and Avanti. Mountain Magic Equipment recently closed its two Bear Street locations and relocated to the 200 block of Banff Avenue.
While some businesses blame main-floor vacancies on the lack of awareness of Bear Street, it has also been suggested there are other reasons for vacancies, including natural business attrition, market saturation and competition in certain business sectors, like outerwear and souvenir gift shops, as well as a shift in consumer shopping habits.
“When you’re only getting 17 per cent of the foot traffic, that means you’re only getting 17 per cent of the available money being spent,” said Kennedy.
“There’s a rather large vacancy rate on Bear Street, which is, quite frankly, not good for the town and certainly not good for the landlords and merchants here.”
In recent times, the Town of Banff has invested time and money to make Bear Street more inviting and attractive, including the seasonal installation of Christmas lights, special event banners on street light poles, flower barrels on the sidewalks, public artwork and improved landscaping.
In addition, council is considering making Bear Street a pedestrian-priority street known as a woonerf, which are widely popular in Europe and growing in popularity in North America.
Mayor Karen Sorensen said she believes council has worked hard in the past few years to support Bear Street retailers to make the street more vibrant and attractive to visitors.
“We are well aware of the difference in foot traffic between Banff Avenue and Bear Street, but Banff Avenue has been there for 125 years and is one of the most photographed streets in Canada,” she said.
“With that in mind, we’ve done things within our municipal responsibility that we believe are intended to make Bear Street more attractive and draw more people to it.”
The suggestion made by Kennedy for a directory similar to Ottawa’s Byward Market area has been sent to the Town of Banff’s planning and development department.
Randall McKay, the Town of Banff’s planning and development manager, said he believes urban design, landscape features, architecture and getting people out of their cars will make visitors want to spend more time in downtown Banff to discover all it has to offer.
He said the town-wide wayfinding master plan adopted an approach to direct pedestrians and motorists to specific districts, as opposed to individual businesses or streets, with the exception of national historic sites or key landmarks.
He said a series of large-scale information kiosks have also been placed in and around the downtown area to provide context maps, district delineation, community information and pedestrian directional signage.
“A very deliberate decision was made as part of the wayfinding strategy to not clutter streetscape with an overabundance of signs, including business directories, given how small the downtown core is, not to mention our location in a national park and UNSECO world heritage site,” he said.
“A quick review of our existing tenancy mapping also suggests that in order to encompass the 100-plus “off Banff Avenue” businesses in the downtown, a very sizable directory sign would be required. I’m just not convinced yet another sign would increase foot traffic to Bear Street.”
McKay said the Ottawa Byward Market kiosk is large and has a three dimensional map, but it should be noted that it covers a 20 block area of downtown Ottawa.
“This style of kiosk was not considered appropriate in the Banff context given the small size and scale of the downtown core,” he said.
“All of that said, there is an online version of the Ottawa Byward Market kiosk map and I don’t want to rule out the possibility of developing a similar online-interactive downtown business directory map for Banff at some point in the future.”
McKay said he believes there are also a series of other new projects that have been approved, are underway or in the planning stages that will undoubtedly help draw pedestrians to Bear Street.
They include talk of a woonerf style street, the creation of additional parking stalls in and around the periphery of the downtown district, the approval of a new retail-restaurant building on the site of the old Timbers restaurant, redevelopment and upgrading of the exterior of Cascade Plaza, and redevelopment of the Homestead Inn, which will include significant upgrades and improvement to the lane between Bear and Lynx streets.
“In my opinion, all of the above noted developments will help draw more people to Bear Street and all of downtown,” said McKay.
The Town of Banff is also encouraging Bear Street businesses to resurrect a merchant’s association of Bear/Wolf/Caribou streets as the best way to work with the Town of Banff and bring forward suggestions to improve Bear Street.
“I encourage Mr. Kennedy and the Bear Street merchants to meet as a group to brainstorm ideas for the area,” said Mayor Sorensen. “We always welcome when the public gets involved to come up with solutions as a group.”
