Fort St. James open for business

Following three years of vision and work, the community of Fort St. James is ready to show off.

Last Friday, the local Chamber of Commerce hosted a celebration in honour of the completion of their downtown revitalization project - a $1.6-million endeavour to, as chamber director Laura Chernowski put it, "restore the can-do attitude."

"The project got kicked off right in the middle of the [economic] downturn. Fort St. James was hit hard," Chernowski said, explaining several hundred people were out of work with two out of the four local mills shut down.

But the Embracing Our Roots Downtown Revitalization Project employed local contractors and helped to restore a new sense of civic pride for the community.

In a short building season, $94,000 worth of exterior upgrades were completed on 20 different buildings with five to 10 per cent of the cost contributed by local business owners. Also completed was the installation of an electronic notice board to advertise local community events, signage to direct people into town and a number of landscaping blocks along downtown walkways.

The revitalization project was funded federally by the Western Economic Diversification Fund, provincially by the Northern Economic Development Trust and locally by the District of Fort St. James, the Chamber of Commerce and Integris Credit Union.

Going hand-in-hand with sprucing up the area's downtown core, the Chamber of Commerce board in charge of the project was also focused on driving tourism into Fort St. James.

"The majority of the [tourism] strategy was built around the historic park. We didn't have the stick factor for people coming into town," Chernowski said. "People come into town, go to the historic park then turn right and leave. The key was how do we get people to turn left?"

Not only did they work to make the area more aesthetically appealing, but also informative by compiling an interpretive historic walking tour called Ripples of the Past between the national historic site and Cottonwood Park.

"It introduces people to a really interesting and diverse history. There's an abundance of stories," Chernowski said.

The district also hopes to install a mural to showcase some scenes from its history, which has gone from fur trading to bioenergy.

"A big part of the project was recognizing we have elements in the community we should be leveraging off of," she said, noting that helping local resources with their marketing was something which could benefit the entire community.