Christine Leadman is the new executive director of the Bank Street BIA. The association is launching a rebranding campaign with a logo and tag lines.
Westboro has Westfest. The Glebe has Lansdowne. But what does downtown Bank Street have? That’s the question the Bank Street BIA hopes to answer in the coming months with a new executive director and a bold new brand.
New director Christine Leadman started the position just a few weeks ago, but she is no rookie when it comes to building up Ottawa’s shopping hotspots.
Leadman is best known for her 14 years as head of the Westboro BIA and a four-year stint as city councillor for the Kitchissippi ward.
Now she’s moving up: literally right up the street, leaving her two-year old position at the Glebe BIA to replace recently retired Gerry LePage as the new head of Bank Street’s biggest business organization.
The Bank Street BIA is the largest and oldest of the city’s BIAs. It serves dozens of businesses and covers 15 blocks of the largely commercial area, making it a much larger project than Leadman’s former job at the Glebe BIA.
She says that the ambition of the project is part of the appeal and denies any negativity connected to her departure from the Glebe BIA.
“My role in my previous BIA (in the Glebe) was more advocacy and lobbying. It was focused and channeled, and I felt there was a lot more than I could offer and do,” she says.
“Being the oldest in the city, being the biggest, it (the Bank Street BIA) has a lot more challenges that I felt I would be able to get my hands into. Bank Street has been a little bit forgotten,” she says.
While he was a bit surprised by Leadman’s departure, Greg Best, current chair of the Glebe BIA, understands her interest in the area.
“I think that Bank Street certainly needs some work. It’s trying to reenergize itself. I think Christine probably thought, ‘Here’s a chance to take on some bigger challenges,’ ” he says.
Those challenges were reported in 2003, when former executive director LePage identified the BIA’s struggle with the street’s diverse sections and its hopes for a major rebranding project.
After almost 30 years in the position, LePage retired last May, right around the time that new branding project finally came to realization.
It’s a real transition time for the Bank Street BIA, according to Kevin Miller, the director of the BIA’s board and owner of local men’s retailer Stroked Ego.
The new look involves a colourful logo and ditching the word “Promenade” for a slicker new slogan: “Intersection of everything.”
While Miller says that right now Ottawa residents might not have a good idea of what’s in the area, the new campaign aims to turn that around.
“If you think of different places in the city, like the Glebe for example, you automatically get an idea of what that is,” says Miller, explaining that right now Bank St is missing that kind of strong image.
The BIA’s goals towards developing that sense of identity include attracting younger residents, securing a new major anchor store for the area, and cultivating signature events on Bank.
Last May, the BIA reached out to locals with a “pop up” centre that presented the new brand and asked residents for a dream list of shops they’d like to see in the community.
A major women’s clothing chain and some type of small grocer topped that list, according to Miller. He says the BIA is currently offering realtors and brokers a bonus commission if they can bring in stores from that list.
In the meantime, Leadman is looking forward to building the Bank Street brand with more signature events.
“We were very lucky to have Pride, the parade, back on Bank Street this year, and that was a huge success,” she says. “We’re also looking at other events that will really anchor Bank Street as a real vibrant area.”
According to Leadman, a couple of the upcoming projects involve a zombie invasion for Halloween, live radio events, and a new Bank Street gift card program.
While the area is currently the site of many new condo projects that look promising for local businesses, it also faces competition from the Rideau Centre, the new Lansdowne Park development, and the Sparks Street BIA’s new project aiming to attract more upscale retailers to the downtown pedestrian mall.