A longtime small-business owner still believes Prince George's downtown will one day be a vibrant place to do business but, after a decade hoping for a revitalized city core, his wait is finished.
Unfortunately, said Brian Chang, nothing much changed during those years for downtown businesses since he helped open The Chinese Store with his parents Jerry and Ginette. While the city centre is somewhat safer and more appealing to the retail trade, the downtown is still "not quite there yet" and with his business struggling with the economic downturn, he's set to shut his doors some time during the next three months.
"There's been technically really no revitalization in the 10 years I've been here," said Chang. "I understand it takes time. I've waited 10 years and I'm still waiting."
He acknowledges there have been modest improvements - the decision to remove parking metres at the end of 2008 boosted business and the now defunct downtown ambassador program helped make the area more friendly to potential customers. Most significantly, he said the recent closure of the Prince George Hotel stopped the "yelling and the screaming" around his business about "80 to 90 per cent" to the point where it's "quite safe" for people to visit his store with their children.
However, since the economic downturn began in earnest in 2008, he says the region's population is about "10,000 short" of where it needs to be to sustain a specialty business like The Chinese Store.
Downtownwise, there are still a few too many "undesirables" on the streets ("I don't have any problem with them, they don't have any problem with me, but my customers, are put off by the general vagrancy of the downtown core.") But most of all, while he says City Hall and the various organizations dedicated to improving the area continue to do the best they can, the downtown lacks sufficient support from dedicated businesses and consumers.
"There's not quite enough small businesses down here to be a collective, that's the bottom line," said Chang. "There's nothing really the downtown improvement association, the city, can do to make it good, other than what they're doing right now. They're trying to do the best they can with what they have.
"What businesses and consumers have to do, they have to support the downtown. And then small businesses have to collectively come downtown to make it like a mini-mall. That's why I always believed in being downtown - you have to be downtown as a small business or you don't have a downtown.
"If you start going outside the downtown core, setting up businesses, which is fine, you're depleting the downtown. If a lot more small businesses chose downtown as a retail strip, an office strip, it just brings more vibrancy."
After closing The Chinese Store, Chang plans to move to Guangzhou, a city in southern China about four hours from Hong Kong where he hopes to teach English.
"It's sad," said Chang on the end of his business. "When the time comes I'll be a bit more teary-eyed."
