Commercial Street Is A 'Great' Street
Offering Cheap Rent, Will It Prosper?
Looking Back . . .
Why The Business Exodus From Downtown?
Every time you turn around Nanaimo City Hall is throwing more and more tax dollars at the downtown core in a decades old effort to 'revitalize' the centre of the old city. A recent example was the repaving of Bastion Street from the bridge to Front Street.
In addition the downtown area benefits from sidewalk cleaning, flower baskets, spending extra money having litter picked up etc. This is of course in addition to tax dollar supported efforts to boost the downtown such as $500,000 for the Port Theatre, $1,000,0000 for the VICC, $300,000 for the DNBIA, $12,000,000 for new offices, special tax exemptions and on it goes.
It could be argued that the same management team responsible for trying to revitalize the downtown core is the same team that oversaw it's decay in the first place. So, how did Commercial Street go from being the hub of business to being a rundown dump which could only be revitalized with massive amounts of tax dollars?
I first moved to Nanaimo in 1970 and Commercial Street was the centre of trade and commerce for Nanaimo. There was a small indoor mall at what is now Brooks Landing called Northbrook Mall and that was the last commercial centre until you got to Lantzville (which still doesn't have a commercial centre).
Most of Nanaimo would find itself downtown on a Friday night or Saturday doing the weekly grocery shopping or taking advantage of the special sales at Sears in Harbour Park Mall (now Port Place) or Eatons on Victoria Cresent. In addition to a wide variety of retailers including Woolworths and the Met, downtown was the epicentre for business, in particular the real estate business. Nanaimo Realty and Block Brothers were the two big dogs on the street, one occupying the Great National Land Building at one end, and the other occupying the offices where our MLA is now located at the other end.
The Malaspina Hotel (now the Pacifica) was home to traveling business folk as well as being a popular spot for coffee or lunch by the downtown business crowd. The Villa (now the Dorchester) was also a popular hotel for the traveling business community as well as a spot for coffee and lunch. The local daily occupied a spot on Commercial Street (now the 223 Gallery) and the radio station was situated on Esplanade across from Port Place Mall. The local shopper was located just over Bastion Street bridge in the building now occupied by NYS and the two 'papers' and the radio station fought it out for ad revenue from the merchants on Commercial Street. Everyone seemed to be happy and doing well back then.
All of this trade and commerce would have been non-existent had it not been for the huge payroll provided by Harmac which back then was the heart of the economic engine that ran Nanaimo. Of course the fishery was also a thriving driver as well, but it was the payroll that flowed from Harmac that kept downtown merchants singing. Anytime there was so much as the threat of a strike at the mill, downtown merchants became concerned.
So how did Nanaimo's downtown core go from being the centre of trade and commerce to being a run down dump requiring truckloads of tax dollars to try and bring back to life? Who has been in the driver's seat? Why did business leave downtown? Was this all an accident no one could see coming, or a planned event that has kept the wheels grinding in Nanaimo over the years?
It will take a smarter mind than mine to divine the truth and I welcome input and opinion from any readers. Of course I realize this is a subject that will likely gather as much interest as our recent strategic planning sessions but think it is worth looking into.
When it comes to sorting these kind of mysteries out, it is always a good idea to follow the money. For example, who would have benefited from the downtown business exodus? Who is benefiting from the downtown revitalization focus?
TO BE CONTINUED.......
ReplyDeletelets be brutal, lets say theres the 6 retail spaces in the conferance center, take those 6 stores and times them by 12 for the months in the year and you 72, 72 checks a year for rent but they only get 2 a month for 24 checks a year, now add that with the fact no one wants to build the hotel for the conference center and the conferance center will be a failure without a hotel, so with the failed conferance center you have a good idea of why nanaimo is dead, then just walk across the street, almost every store is 2nd hand goods, walk across the other street no one wants to use the old A&B sound building, catch my drift
cuz to them its an improvement and they'ld even allowed themselves to be executed before they admit its a failure, so they hire more spin doctors to talk about improvemnets and revitalization, but its all a big failure, big failure, huge failure collasal failure and it will just keep getting worse and worse, whats the next improvemnet for downtown, rip down the old katerinas restaurant and then have the devopers back out, or rip down the old fiesta theater and have the owners say theres no need to build condos right now cuz theres a glut on the market and then the spin doctors say, it makes good business sense and then blame everything on the economy