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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1987-11-18, Page 5THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 1987. PAGE 5. Rejuvenating Main Street Heritage Canada shows Seaforth how to get new business... ...and save classic buildings at the same time BY KEITH ROULSTON To save the buildings first you havetosavethetown ; that'sthe driving motive behind the Main Street Canada program of Heri­ tage Canada Foundation which in the past year has added Seaforth to the list of towns and cities in Canada that have undertaken the program. Preserving and restoring classic Canadian architecture is the first thing many people think of when Heritage Canada is mentioned says Tom Lemon, Main Street Co-ordinator in Seaforth, but it's only one of four (and the fourth of that) points the Main Street Program. There isn’t much sense fixing up a main street building if it's going to sit empty so the first steps in the Main Street program are all involved in getting the community moving economically. So last spring Seaforth, as the other 71 communities across Can­ ada who have been involved in the Main Street program, went under the microscope of a “resource team" from Heritage Canada. The team included a marketing specia­ list, an economic/community development person and an archi­ tect (along with, in Seaforth’s case, a representative from the Ontario Ministry of Municipal Affairs in Toronto). The team went to work to analyse what’s going on in the community, discover the weak­ nesses the community has in terms of competing for shoppers’ dollars and the new businesses and industry and identify opportunities the town might want to exploit for a more prosperous future. The research team made some interesting discoveries and their work was filled out by further research by student Brian Treble (who also did work for the County Planning Department in Blyth this summer). The research showed Seaforth loses a startling $15 to $25 million in shoppers' dollars each year from its primary shopping area to competing shopping areas, the biggest amongthem being the east side of Stratford. Brian Treble’s comparison of Seaforth with the eight competing shopping areas on identical items (everything from a 3/8’' drill to a box of Pampers to blue jeans) and discovered that Seaforth was precisely in the middleontheoverallcostofthe basket of 25 goods. Put together with other interest­ ing tidbits such as the fact one million cars go through the main intersection of Seaforth each year, the fact most people who go out of town to shop do so on Friday’s and Saturday’s and are looking for more variety of selection than they can get at home, and the resource team compiled information that allowed the program to set some goals for the community. If the Main Street Canada program is as successful in Sea­ forth as earlier projects such as Main Street program has good track record Perth, Ontario and Nelson, B.C., the entire economy of Seaforth may be revived and with it the look of the town including the main street buildings, known as one of the best examples of a Victorian-era street­ scape in Ontario. That classic streetscape may have been one of the factors that led Heritage Canada to accept Seaforth as the smallest-ever participant in its program. The town applied to be part of the program early last year with the local deputy clerk-treasurer being Tom Lemon, Main Street Co-ordinator for Seaforth shows a sketch that will help a Seaforth merchant see what his shop would look like without the frills that were added in a modernization in the 1930's. Before the classic Victorian architecture can be saved, however, the Main Street program aims at getting the local economy healthy. a driving force and the Business Improvement Association (BIA) and the Local Architectural Con­ servancy Advisory Committee (LACAC) joined forces to push the idea. The program is not cheap which is why Seaforth is the smallest community to ever take part. The local community contracts (the town of Seaforth and the BIA have contracted) to hire the Main Street Co-ordinator and fund the costs of running the program for three years. The annual budget for Seaforth is $47,000. Heritage Canada provides training for the Main Street Co-ordinator, pays for the resource team and gives it expertise learned in early Main Street Programs and based on the results of the U.S. National Trust for Historical Preservation in the United States in the 1970’s. For Tom Lemon, with the undergraduate studies in urban planning and a master degree in landscape planning and work experience in Tobermory, Niagara-on-the-Lake and two years as a senior systems planner for historic parks with the federal government, the opportunity to become a Main Street Co-ordinator allowed him tocombine his interest in heritage buildings with broader community development. Heritage Canada gave him an intensive 10-day training course based on the knowledge it picked Program takes 4 steps to turn a town around up in earlier projects like Perth and Nelson. From that he learned of the four steps the program employs to get the community moving. The first goal is to get the people and the resources of the community organized. People have been used to sitting back letting things happen. They must be convinced they can make a difference if they get involved. The second point involves mar­ keting and is where the research comes into play. The program seeks to focus attention of the core-area business community on the need to be more competitive. Main streets are competing with shopping malls in larger centres but shopping centres have mall managers and written agreements with tenants for joint promotions. Mall managers look over the services their mall offers and goout and recruit businesses to fill gaps while in towns like Seaforth (and Blyth and Brussels) it’s catch as catch can. A store is seldom vacant long in a mall while it might be vacant for a month, six months or six years on a main street. When the program began in Seaforth there were nine vacant stores on main street. In the third step, the program looks for broader economic de velopment in the community, asking what are the opportunities for economic growth. Agriculture has always been the basis of Seaforth’s economy but there seem tobenoreal opportunities for growth in serving a declining farm population so while it will remain the core of local business, the town must find other areas for Continued on Page 6 The International Scene The Free Trade Debate... the facts and the fiction BY RAYMOND CANON If I were a minister and were askedtopreach asermonon the subject of free trade, 1 would choose as my Bible passage First Corinthians, Chapter 13, Verse 1: “Though I speak with the tongues of men and angels and have not charity, 1 am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.’’ I can honestly say that never in the history of economic debate have 1 heardsomuchutternonsense; 1 could easily add to the above passage about the tinkling cymbals that of the braying of asses. Having got all that off my chest, where do 1 as an economist stand on the matter? If I had to get up and preach a sermon or make a speech, what would I say? I’m glad you asked. In my mind the first thing that 1 should tell you is to discount or perhaps dismiss entirely all those “experts" who are either totally vi iviaiijr til lavour of the agreement that Canada has made with the United States, the full details of which have not been released at the time of writing. This should make things easier for everybody in that with one swoop we have got rid of 95 per cent of everything that has been said to date; we can now concentrate on the overall picture. Fact One: Like any other agree­ ment there is nothing in this one that suggests that it was either the work of the devil or a panacea for what ails us. Any objective studies that have been done on the subject indicate that there would be both winners and losers; that is how it should be. When you sit down to work out an agreement of this nature, you have to be prepared to compromise; that is what the Canadian team under Simon Reis- man has done. So, for that matter have the Americans. To cite an obvious winner from the Cnadian point of view, let me talk about the steel industry for a moment. There is no doubt in my mind that our industry is head and shoulders above that of the Americans when it comes to a direct comparison. The superiority ofsuch companies as Stelco and Dofasco must be looking forward to passage of the agreement with great anticipation. On the other side of the ledger, take the trucking industry. Free trade will mean that many truckers on this side of the border will either have to get very efficient in a big hurry or else go out of business. The larger ones such as Laidlaw are going to have an easier time adjusting than the smaller ones but, whateverthe size, theywill have to work hard at it. FactTwo: Not surprisingly there will be some jobs gained and some lost. The real question is whether there will be a net gain or a net loss. Itishere thatthere has beena great deal of irresponsible talk and you can safely ignore most of it. About the only real study done to date on the question is by Prof. Richard Harris of Queen’s University. To quote verbatim from the study, Prof. Harris concludes that “in both the short and the long run labour would benefit substantially ... in terms of both the quality and the quantity of jobs available." in short, while he believes that there would be some jobs lost, there would be a net gain both quantita­ tively and qualitatively. Iwould hope that there will be further studiesdoneon this very important subject. Fact Three: Over half of the goods which come across the U.S. - Canadian border already function under free trade conditions. Unfor­ tunately few people have made any effort to study how firms have coped when they found their protectionist world crumbling. In most cases there appears to have been a considerable amount of rationalization take place within the industry to permit companies to compete. To cite an illustration of this, a company that produced 36 types of widgets for the Canadian market now finds that they cannot compete in all items with the Americans. However, with some widgets they can. As a result the varietyofwidgetsissmaller but, as far astheones they do produce, the production run is longer; in the long run they have had to take on extra labour, not shed it. Fact Four: As yet there has been no credible alternative to free trade. What would the detractors putinitsplacethathasanyreal chance of enhancing our economic climate? What bothers me is that standing still is not an answer. We have to move and move resolutely if we have any hope of maintaining our standard of living. I am not unabashedly in favour of free trade at any cost. However, it is really annoying when people dismiss it out of hand without having anything else to put in its place. What we need right now is to be able to listen to both sides, debate it and then come up with a decision. At the present time Canadians are being given very little chance to do that.