Is Bradford downtown plan going to happen?

Business community cautiously optimistic
By By Sean Pearce Simcoe.com Mar 08, 2012
Has downtown Bradford’s time finally come?
 The local business community certainly hopes so.
 So much so, in fact, that the Bradford Board of Trade has struck a downtown committee of its own to keep tabs on the town’s revitalization efforts and to provide input along the way. And while hopes for a successful resuscitation of the downtown core run high, that optimistic outlook is peppered with pragmatism.
“There are huge challenges ahead of us,” Coffee Culture owner and downtown revitalization committee member Janet Chu said at the BBT committee’s inaugural meeting held at the Bradford Dominion Lending Centres office last week. “I think that everyone has really come together and realized that we have to do this.”
 A big part of that coming together process was council’s decision to approve the Downtown Bradford Revitalization Strategy Implementation Work Plan last month. The 14-page document builds upon the revitalization strategy endorsed in the spring and lays out a series of projects and priorities for the 2012-2014 timeframe.
 The four primary projects identified for that period include the reconstruction of Holland Street, from Bridge Street to Professor Day Drive, the development of a downtown-specific office of economic development, a review of the town’s official plan, zoning bylaws and other municipal edicts and, finally, the designation of the downtown core area as a community improvement project, which would allow the municipality to offer incentives to business and property owners who improve their buildings and attract new tenants.
 And, while the work plan was approved by council, a few members expressed concern about the document especially with respect to the $80,000 earmarked to hire consultants to design Holland Street.
 “I just can’t support $80,000 on a consultant’s report,” deputy mayor Rob Keffer said. “I do support revitalizing the downtown, but I’d like to see this money put toward something that will provide direction for the town’s engineering department to do something with the downtown.”
 Ward 6 Councillor James Leduc agreed that the town would be better off having the work performed in-house rather than by a third-party consultant.
 The majority of councillors, however, felt that the design consultant was the best option to ensure that the town rebuilds Holland Street properly.
 “If you’re going to do this right, you have to do conceptual design first, because there are so many infrastructure considerations,” Ward 2 Councillor Del Crake cautioned.
Similarly, Ward 3 Councillor Gary Lamb drew attention to the fact that businesses pay significantly more in taxes than homeowners and rarely see a return. Approving the workplan and moving forward with the consultant represents an investment in the local business community, he said.
 “How many more chances are we going to get?” he said. “Fifteen years from now whoever is on council will be facing the same thing again if we don’t get moving on this.”
For his part, Mayor Doug White said that the downtown is as important to Bradford as the TTC is to Toronto. And just as Toronto needs to get going on its transit plans, whatever they may be, Bradford needs to start moving on its plan for the downtown.
 “We need progress here, not perfection,” he said.
 Not dissimilar from council, members of the BBT’s downtown committee also had reservations about spending $80,000 of the $200,000 budgeted for downtown revitalization on consulting.
 Nancy Young of Nancy’s Nifty Nook and the Bradford Arts Guild’s Trudy Neumeyer explained that they had both been part of downtown studies in the past that involved lots of consultants, produced plenty of pretty reports, but little else in terms of results.
 That being said, Ms Neumeyer expressed hope that this revitalization effort will be different. Having the town select a theme of some sort for the downtown could be helpful, as some communities in Colorado and elsewhere have done, she said, but the biggest obstacle to tackle is the various vacant storefronts.
 “We have to investigate that part of the problem,” Ms Neumeyer said. “Empty places are not good.”
 “It’s so depressing,” added Lucy Wilson an account manager with Nacora International Insurance Brokers.
 If the town really wants to have its downtown rival Stouffville and Newmarket’s it will really have to provide some good incentives, Ms Wilson said. Bradford’s challenges may be different from those experienced by the aforementioned, communities, but they can be overcome if the will is there, she added.
 On some of the short-term items, the committee largely agreed that the town should make an attempt to fix the uneven sidewalks in the downtown core as well as put in place better planters, plants, benches and garbage cans. Historical plaques were also cited as an easy way to spruce up downtown.
 There were, however, some differences of opinion especially when it came time to discuss exactly what the downtown should be revitalized into with suggestions ranging from an entertainment or fashion district to a professional area with mixed use buildings or even high-rise developments.
 In any case, the one thing everyone seemed in agreement on was that the town needed to locate its municipal headquarters in the neighbourhood if any push for revitalization was to be successful.
 “They need to spearhead it,” Ms Wilson said. “They need to take the lead.”
 Ms Young agreed. It may be more expensive initially to build a town hall in the downtown area, but the return on the investment will undoubtedly be huge, she said.
 “They need to look at the money, but also what’s going to bring the biggest benefit to the town,” Ms Young said. “It’s not always just about the money.”
 A downtown address for the future town hall will be vital in determining the area’s fortunes, BBT president and Be Well Chiropractic owner Cliff Ngai said.
 “They need to take the first step,” he said. “Developers might be interested, but they won’t move forward unless the town goes first.”
 “Hopefully (a town hall) would get the ball rolling,” Ms Chu added.