‘Envy of Atlantic Canada’
Dawn Alan, executive director of Downtown Charlottetown Inc., loves her city
With new downtown businesses (42 last year), investment by property owners and developers, immigration and economic development and growth, Dawn Alan believes Charlottetown has become the “envy of Atlantic Canada.”
Originally from Charlottetown, Alan is celebrating her 13th year as Downtown Charlottetown Inc.’s only executive director this summer.
Within the downtown, or Business Improvement Area (Pownal to Euston to Prince streets to the water as its boundaries), approximately 330 property owners pay an 18-cent business levy per $100 square feet of commercially assessed space. That amount contributed to the organization’s $320,000 budget last year. Property owners are voting members, but the organization also represents the estimated 450 businesses (both property owners and tenants) within the BIA, Alan explained.
With that funding, the nonprofit organization offers several programs and beautification products to improve the downtown core for businesses, property owners as well as residents, such as the Downtown Farmers’ Market on Sundays, Adopt a Corner (which has grown from seven to 80), façade improvement, the picnic tables on Victoria Row and the 2018 red sign at the waterfront near the Prince Edward Island Convention Centre.
But the organization is also mindful that it is part of a community and has programs to help those in need. These include Coats for Kids (in October), the green caring metres and the navigator street outreach program, which involved hiring an outreach person to work with the city’s homeless and sidewalk panhandlers. Alan says the navigator street outreach program is returning this year.
She has a business degree from UPEI and a professional designation in business district management from Rutgers University in New Jersey.
In addition to her role with DCI, she is a board member with Downtowns Canada and the International Downtown Association in Washington. Sitting on these boards gives Alan the opportunity to compare Charlottetown to other cities to see what is and isn’t working and borrow ideas to improve the city.
Alan sat down this week with The Guardian for a Q&A session to talk about Downtown Charlottetown Inc. and how it is making a difference in the city’s downtown business community.
Q: Why did you want the executive director job with Downtown Charlottetown Inc.?
A: I love Charlottetown. I don’t say that flippantly. I love Charlottetown. I’m proud of it. I’m proud of its businesses and citizens. I want everyone to see it and experience it. I want to see us prosper. I want to see our businesses prosper. And, I want to promote entrepreneurship, new businesses, beautification, visitation. And, this job affords me that opportunity.
Q: How would you describe downtown Charlottetown 13 years ago when you joined the organization?
A: The reason that Downtown Charlottetown Inc. exists is that 13 or 14 years ago, business was closing, retail was closing in downtown Charlottetown. The big box stores were opening. They were big and shiny. There was lots of parking. There were new brand name stores. So, it created a void in downtown. And, we could easily have just left it at that and maybe become a service centre – as some downtowns do. Or, we could, as luck would have it, stakeholders and business people came together and decided that isn’t where we wanted to go. Harry O’Connell, a business owner locally and who we would refer to as BIA (Business Improvement Area) godfather – and other business people came together and formed a committee, which then developed into the BIA, which Downtown Charlottetown Inc. is, and said we’re going to make a change. We’re going to redevelop, rejuvenate, support our downtown, recruit new business. And we’re going to see growth in the future rather than loss. And that’s exactly what they did.
Q: Why is it important to encourage people to live downtown and businesses to locate downtown?
A: Across the nation, across the world, the downtowns, the hubs, the core of the cities, are the heartbeat of the community. And unless you have a strong heartbeat, the rest of the community, the neighbouring communities can’t be successful. And if the heartbeat is successful, then the smaller communities are successful as well. It’s very much a domino effect. People are moving back to the downtowns. Two groups more than any other – the millennials, who are absolutely clustering the downtown, and the seniors, who are selling their homes and seeing an opportunity to move to the downtowns, to condos, to quality living without all of the work associated with your own home. In order to have residents in the downtown, we have to have businesses in the downtown. They have to be able to access restaurants, entertainment. They have to be able to buy their groceries. They have to have neighbours. The need to be able to walk. They need trails and access to green spaces. Well, we have to be able, as Business Improvement Areas more so than many others, to support all of these needs. And, in doing so, we need to support our businesses.
Q: Looking ahead, what needs to happen or change for the downtown to improve?
A: I think that we have to support development in our downtown and we have to support our developers. And, we have to do that in keeping with who we are and respectful of our historic downtown. But they have to be able to work together. We know right now that we have the lowest available residential rates in Charlottetown – ever in history. Less than one-per-cent availability. We know through data collection across the nation, that people are looking to move in our downtown, and we have to be able to accommodate them in order to do that. And so, we are in a pretty blessed place right now. There’s so much happening in downtown Charlottetown. There’s development. There’s new business. There’s excitement. People want to move downtown. People want to open businesses here. But unless we also expand and develop and create new, we will come to a standstill. We have to be able to build. And in order to build, we have to be able to support our developers while also respecting our history, our heritage.