Posted Mar 13, 2009, 2:30 AM
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Join Date: Aug 2008
Location: Vancouver
Posts: 1,977
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Quote:
DOWNTOWN MERCHANTS BALK AT PLAN
By FRANCES BULA
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Special to the Globe and Mail
The transportation plan for the Olympics announced yesterday has Vancouver businesses that once looked forward to the Games worried they will be dealt another blow on top of the hits they have taken from the recession and pre-Olympics construction projects.
They're concerned that people who normally work downtown will avoid it, while businesses along the rest of the city's extensive Olympics-only commuter routes fear that both customers and suppliers may be put off by the lack of parking.
"We don't want the message to be 'Don't come downtown,' " said Charles Gauthier, director of the Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association. "We know that at Salt Lake City, on Day 3 of their Games, the mayor had to stand up and invite people back downtown because of that kind of message."
Instead, VANOC vice-president Terry Wright said yesterday that while the message will be "There's no room for the car," it will also be "There is room for you - on transit."
But he also mentioned that downtown employers could promote telecommuting or taking time off during the Games.
Some downtown workers are already planning to do that, fearing the traffic mess that road closings will bring.
"I'm going to work from home," said Judy Sauer, an insurance broker at Marsh Canada at Burrard and West Pender Streets who travels in from Coquitlam every day. She normally uses the waterfront road to leave the downtown core - a road that will be closed. "Anybody that's got a long commute is going to have a hard time. I wouldn't want to be there."
That's the last thing Mr. Gauthier's 8,000 downtown businesses want to hear.
"There are a high number of employees who come downtown to work and those employees are their bread and butter."
In areas outside the downtown - especially on Cambie where the street has been dug up for two years already to build the new Canada Line - business owners have been taken aback by the scope of the Olympics transportation lanes.
They knew that streets such as Hastings, Broadway and Cambie were likely to become Olympics highways. They just didn't know it meant they were going to lose all their street parking 24 hours a day for possibly up to a month next February to move people around during both the Olympics and Paralympics.
"I think there is a lot of worry out there on the street," said Patricia Barnes, director of the association that represents the businesses strung along Hastings Street, one of the city's busiest commuter routes for the eastern suburbs. "We're not a legacy community. We're not a community that's going to have a lot of tourist activity as compensation. And these are mom-and-pop retail stores so they can't just close up for a month."
On Cambie, where some owners are in the middle of a legal battle over the damages they suffered as a result of the SkyTrain line construction, people are trying to be calm. But it's an effort.
"It's been a long haul. And now it's going to be a big closure," said Ed Gackley. He's a partner in the Original Joe's restaurant that opened five years ago at the corner of Cambie and Broadway. For almost half that time, the intersection there has been dug up for the Canada Line. He thought it had ended a couple of months ago, but then it got dug up again recently, he said, because of some kind of newly discovered problem with the lack of separation between the sewer and water lines. That has forced customers to walk through a maze to get to his restaurant door; he's operating with half his normal staff as a result.
And now he will see next February not one but two Olympics-designated lanes on the two sides of his business, since both Cambie and Broadway will be Games corridors.
"I'm in an interesting situation," Mr. Gackley said.
Leonard Schein, who operates the Park Theatre on Cambie, said businesses on Cambie are supportive of the Games and willing to do their part to help.
But they're still hoping VANOC, whose staff did not consult with any of the businesses before making yesterday's announcement, will talk to them to help work out how they are going to get deliveries.
"We thought that we were only going to have restrictions in the afternoon, so we could have the mornings for deliveries like the downtown is getting," Mr. Schein said. "We weren't expecting 24 hours. And a lot of big trucks can't get into our lanes."
Businesses on Broadway, where Olympics lanes will mean no parking any time between Arbutus and Commercial, are also bracing themselves for what the traffic difficulties will bring to the street, which recently went through an extensive renovation.
"They were shocked when they heard about the plan. It's been three years of traffic hell already and here's yet another problem," said Donna Dobo, the owner of Just Imagine and a representative of the West Broadway Business Association. "There's just been so many layers of difficulty for business. Everybody's margins are so tight."
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Source: Globe and Mail
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