Closing St. Anne Street to traffic would ruin the commercial viability of downtown, say some downtown business owners, while others are willing to take a cautious approach.
Earlier this week, Mayor Nolan Crouse said he’d like to figure out a way to close the street to create a more pedestrian-friendly “downtown plaza.”
But such a move would ruin the commercial properties downtown, said property owner Philip Starkman, who sounded incredulous on the phone from Edmonton.
“My God, I think that would be catastrophic for my building and the buildings around there,” he said.
Starkman’s family owns the Bruin Centre, which has four businesses along St. Anne Street, including Ric’s Grill and Cranky’s Bike Shop.
Closing the street would make it a dead end with no visibility, which is the lifeblood of any retail operation, Starkman said.
Pedestrian malls work in areas that are five-plus blocks long and have a higher concentration of residents, he said. St. Albert’s downtown is just too small.
“What are you going to do … walk up and down a one-block area 20 times and see the same shops? That’s silliness,” Starkman said. “When you have a small little area, that’s nuts.”
The idea to close St. Anne Street to permanent traffic first emerged in March. It was one of several suggestions from the downtown task force that Crouse spearheaded the previous fall.
The city will need to study traffic and parking impacts before proceeding with any street closure, Crouse said. He expects to hear a lot of feedback, both for and against the idea.
“That’s why we have to really assess the whole traffic [impacts] to see what’s right,” he said.
Solving the parking issues would likely require a parkade, either above-ground at Millennium Park or underground at the current surface lot or a future civic building that Crouse would like to see built across the street from city hall.
These ideas area all aimed at making the current surface lot a more permanent site for festivals and performances.
“That’s the whole secret to the change. You need to have something that nurtures people traffic,” Crouse said.
Cranky’s Bike Shop owner Andrew Phelps has thought all along that the closure would be bad for his business and the past two months have only strengthened that opinion.
“It’s one of those things that everybody thinks is just great in their minds but then once it actually gets done, the downtown becomes a ghost town and everybody starts pointing fingers,” he said.
Chamber of commerce chair Joe Becigneul recently wrote a letter to Crouse saying that closing St. Anne Street is a “very major step” that city council should approach slowly and cautiously.
“If it does become part of a vision, I encouraged him to view it as being very long term in nature,” Becigneul said.
Of particular concern is the effect on existing businesses.
“You have to talk to the businesses along there that are going to be affected because some of them rely on the traffic being able to go by to get to their stores,” he said.
Before closing St. Anne Street permanently, the city should first try closing it on Saturday evenings and during the day on Sunday, said Paul Stehelin, owner of St. Thomas Cafe & Bistro. Such a scheme should be complemented by staging regular events like band performances and youth competitions.
“That way it doesn’t affect the businesses and it still draws people down on the weekends,” he said.
