In the same week that Target closed its doors at Pine Centre and Future Shop disappeared from the Canadian retail landscape, to be replaced by Best Buy in Prince George, the Love Downtown PG event kicked off to celebrate 54 locally-owned-and-operated downtown businesses.
Love Downtown PG is an offshot of the Small Town Love program that started in Quesnel that has spread to 17 other northern communities, thanks to the support of the Northern Development Initiatives Trust. By working together, these businesses have built a loyal base of customers who value the specialized products and services that only a small operation can provide. While big box stores create many jobs and help make Prince George a regional retail hub, small business provides a crucial component to the local economy.
Clearly, Prince George and area residents are willing to spend their hard-earned dollars to buy the goods and services produced and sold by small local businesses. The Love Downtown PG campaign reminds residents that these businesses are here, are thriving and deserve even more support.
The exact opposite of this kind of alliance is being seen at the moment between the warring community market factions in Prince George. Rather than collaborate and build their popularity and prosperity together, the Wilson Square Community Market and the Prince George Farmers' Market Association are squabbling over space and, by extension, customers.
There are all sorts of behind-the-scenes machinations here about who booked which spaces when, who was allowed to hold space to the detriment of the other and who should be allowed to use the section of Third Avenue between George Street and Queensway for the 2015 outdoor season since both applied for it.
Personalities and principle have now taken over the arguments, as they too often do in conflicts like this. It's not about doing what's right for the marketplace and the customers anymore because that would involve putting aside differences and focusing on the business. Now it's about winning and when that happens, everyone loses.
Both sides turned to city council for redress, asking mayor and councillors to play King Solomon as reporter Charelle Evelyn put it in her story. Unfortunately, the politicians dodged the matter, granting the Wilson Square folks a one-year permit to operate outside of the courthouse, while encouraging the two sides to resolve their differences before the 2016 season.
What both camps need to keep in mind is that the vast majority of the shopping public that likes to come down to both markets simply doesn't care about this turf war. What they're looking for is the experience of shopping at an outdoor market on a sunny warm weekend morning, sampling unique, quality goods from local entrepreneurs that are unavailable anywhere else.
Mayor and council missed an opportunity Monday to do more than kick this problem down the road. Too many quarreling groups turn their internal battles into external matters and then come ask the politicians to sort it out. When that happens, government should put their King Solomon hats on and tell the sides to sort it out or have a settlement imposed on them that neither side will be happy with.
In this case, city council could simply have declined to give operating permits to both groups for the 2015 season. Mayor Lyn Hall said Monday he didn't want to mediate this situation and he was right. What he should have gone on to say, however, was "If you folks can't get along, neither of you gets to do business and all of your vendors will suffer for it. This council has enough problems to work on without having to get into conflict resolution. Fix it yourself and when you're ready to do business, come talk to us."
As a result, the moderates within both camps would have pushed aside the hardliners, found common ground and promptly come back before council with the good news that their differences had been ironed out and they were ready to work together to make the new market zone in front of city hall a success for all parties.
Collaboration and camaraderie, not conflict, fosters business success. The market factions need to follow the example set by other downtown businesses with Love Downtown PG by focusing on their joint interest to produce the best, most successful downtown public market possible.
