Arlington Avenue businessman Tony Daye claims that the BIA abandoned him during last year’s construction disruption along Bank Street.
Some Bank Street businesses owners say they felt abandoned by the local BIA during last year’s construction work that ripped up the street and halted traffic for seven months.
Tony Daye, owner of Sounds Unlikely record store, says he felt the presence of Bank Street Promenade was “non-existent.”
His one-storey business at Bank Street and Arlington Avenue folded on Jan. 16, just two weeks short of its third anniversary, after suffering a 50 per cent cut in sales during the repair work.
The hit could have been minimized, he says, if the BIA helped boost walk-in traffic by posting signs of businesses that stayed open during construction and pitching in with advertising costs in local newspapers.
“Bank Street Promenade doesn’t really give a shit about any businesses south of Gladstone Avenue,” says Daye.
“They did stuff to help promote businesses further up but they did nothing to help promote the ones between Gladstone and Catherine Street.”
It’s hard to say whether the store would have survived if the BIA had stepped in but anything would have helped, he says.
Less than a block away is the Ottawa Kennedy Flower Shop. This Bank Street business suffered a 60 per cent loss in profits, almost prompting owner Don Lee to close the four-and-a-half year old shop.
The construction is public work that needs to get done but the unorganized process dragged on for longer than necessary, says Lee.
He cites a seven-and-a-half week period where he saw no construction workers at the section of Bank Street outside his store window.
“They dug up the whole front of (my) door and blocked the street but then nobody did anything.”
According to Gerry LePage, executive director of the Bank Street BIA, that’s a common misconception as a result of the “layering process” – using various trade crews for different tasks at each of the three Bank Street sections.
“Depending on the particular job and phase, it’s quite possible there was a dormant period, at least what appeared dormant but (workers) were simply just waiting for the other trade to finish before they could start,” he says. “It’s normal under these circumstances.”
While LePage calls the third section – Daye and Lee’s end of Bank Street – the “most ambitious one” because of the length, it was the only section to be completed two or three weeks early.
“As far as advertising, I really don’t know what more we could have done,” he says.
Along with the BIA’s annual promotional budget of “hundreds of thousands of dollars,” LePage says an additional $50,000 was put towards radio, television and print media to remind the public that businesses were still open and parking was available on most side streets.
Despite the criticism, LePage says he’s heard “nothing but compliments” about Bank Street’s new sleek appearance.
“We haven’t received a single call, not one, from any of our members saying this was problematic, so that’s why this comes as bit of a surprise,” he says.
Lepage says he encourages business owners to voice their complaints through “block captains,” who are volunteers among business owners within the construction zone who act as mediators between the city, the BIA and merchants.
“We were very thorough in our communication strategy to ensure our (block captains) were absolutely up to speed with what was happening in regards to their block phase,” he says.
“(Business owners) have recourses that they could have utilized at the time to ask, ‘why is this happening,’ and then obviously an explanation would follow.”