PORT ALBERNI – On Friday October 23rd, members of Port Alberni’s City Council, the Alberni Valley Chamber of Commerce and Community Futures conducted a ‘Business Walks’ through all five of the City’s business areas. Teams went door to door to ask business owners or managers six questions. Three of the questions were common to other Business Walks initiatives in BC so that results will be able to be compared across communities.
Those three questions revolved around the current state of business, what could be done to improve business and what was enjoyed about the business district they are in. The other three questions were aimed at understanding if a Commercial Revitalization Tax Exemption Bylaw would be utilized by the business and if so, what incentives would work best to accomplish the improvements they wanted to make. The teams were supported by City Staff and a Regional Manager from the Ministry of Jobs, Tourism & Skills Training.
128 businesses were visited over a five hour period with 77 surveys completed on the spot and 51 left for completion online at a more convenient time. Although full results won’t be available until later in November, the debrief following the event indicated most businesses had a very busy summer with some recording their best ever sales in decades of business. Most are doing well currently and owners were grateful for the inquiry into their well-being. Merchants also took the opportunity to talk about issues and opportunities which were surprisingly very specific to the business district rather than to the community overall.
Visitors to our community are always amazed to learn we have such a diversity of business districts so here is a short primer: the upper Johnston Road area (on Highway 4 to the west coast) is where most of the ‘big box’ and national/international franchises are located; three districts (lower Johnston Road; 10th & Redford; and Uptown are each host to a terrific variety of small retail businesses, restaurants, coffee shops and service oriented firms; and lower 3rd & 4th Avenue also have a mix of business types and, arguably, has the largest concentration of firms serving industry and contractors to industry.
As always, we extend readers of the Business Examiner an invitation to ‘Stop’ and/or ‘Turn Left’ in Port Alberni on your way through to our neighbours on the west coast. You will be pleasantly surprised by what you see and experience.
– Pat Deakin is the Economic Development Manager for the City of Port Alberni. He can be reached at 250-720-2527 or Patrick_deakin@portalberni.ca.