By Sarah Brunet
Fancy Christmas decorations were only the beginning. Sparks Street Mall management is on a revitalization campaign and Winterlude is next on its agenda.
This year is Sparks Street’s first time as an official host of Winterlude events. Canadian heritage and winter appreciation are the themes for activities taking place the weekends of Feb. 5-7, 12-14 and 19-21. The major festivities include presentations in a maple sugar cabin showing how maple syrup is made, an Inuit exhibition celebrating Canada’s new territory, Nunavut, and a Quebec Cree First Nation of Waswanipi display with a teepee, traditional foods and crafts.
Mall management also challenged Sparks Street merchants to create and submit their own unique designs for ice sculptures which will be on display along the mall.
Albert Gabbay, the chair of the mall’s advertising and promotion committee, says the Christmas decorations and Winterlude events are the beginning steps in management’s effort to liven up Sparks Street.
“We don’t want to be just summer-happening,” says Gabbay. “That’s why we’re taking these steps, like for Christmas, Winterlude and later for the Tulip Festival. We are trying to spread activities throughout the whole year to build momentum and to bring more and more people to the Sparks Street mall.”
According to Mall manager Peter Harris, the time has come to redo a few things on the mall. He says the recent efforts are not so much to boost sales but are a more fresh approach to competitive marketing and attempt to “get with the trends.”
Hanif Hassam, who helps run Lily’s kiosk, is happy Sparks Street is hosting Winterlude events this year.
“I’m really impressed that the management has put some initiative into having more events on Sparks Street itself, because we are in the heart of downtown,” he says.
Elayne Schwartz, who runs Ottawa Leather Goods, believes that having Winterlude on the mall will help sales.
“Anything to bring people downtown,” says Schwartz. “Anything that generates traffic is good for business, maybe not immediately, but it would always be good at some point.”
Although all 20 merchants surveyed agree having Winterlude on Sparks Street provides an incentive for people to come to the mall, a few say this doesn’t mean their sales will improve.
Sebastien Boult, assistant manager at Armstrong Quality Footwear, says that just because people come to participate in an event doesn’t mean they’re going to shop.
“People are not going to pick up a $200 pair of shoes just because they’re downtown here for Winterlude,” says Boult.
Although Boult says the ideas coming from the mall office lately are interesting, he’s doubtful they will work to build business. He suggests improving the architecture, making parking more convenient for customers and bringing in quality merchants to attract a consistent type of customer base would be more helpful.
Harris says he’s aware that revitalizing Sparks Street will take more than just joining a few events. He says that while engaging in events like Winterlude is important to show community involvement and to help during lull times like February, the mall also has plans to improve its appearance and work on retail development.
“My plan is to create a historic site destination with heritage signage, make it a real attraction,” says Harris. “Then we work on content. There’s no doubt that there are some stores here that are hurting us and in the future we want to create different types of stores, some trendy chains. We’ve spent the whole year doing surveys and studies and we’re working on it.”.
“We want to create this as a shopping destination, but as a shopping destination with a twist,” he adds.
Harris says the administration is now trying to pinpoint exactly what it wants. A meeting is planned sometime in February to finalize the agenda for 1999.