Previous Issues
BIA discontent inevitable
?It was only a matter of time before rumblings of discontent began to be heard once again from Toronto Street South regarding the membership and fee structure of the Uxbridge Business Improvement Area (BIA) (see our story on page 11).
We sympathize with the position of Hwy. 47 merchants like Canadian Tire’s Pat Higgins and Ginger Jackson of McDonald’s. As they say, they’ve been paying way more than their share of the BIA budget for years now, and getting precious little out of it.
Think of the BIA-sponsored events of the past few years, like Midnight Madness or Harry Potter or “100 Years of Anne”. These events were almost totally focussed on downtown. Even the Christmas “Shop Local” campaign isn’t designed to get Uxbridgers to go to the Uxbridge Mcdonald’s instead of one in Newmarket or Stouffville, or to the Uxbridge Canadian Tire instead of the one in Port Perry. It makes no sense for us to do otherwise. “Shop Local” is rather designed to get us to go to the shops on Brock Street rather than to booksellers or jewellers or clothiers at the Upper Canada Mall or Oshawa Centre. Again, the focus is “downtown”; essentially, Hwy. 47 merchants are paying the BIA to keep Uxbridge shoppers somewhere else. No wonder they find it hard to justify the expense.
Besides, look at the actual title of the agency: the Business Improvement Area. What role has the BIA functionally played in “improving” the south as a business area? Very little, we would suggest. For one thing, Toronto Street South bears almost no resemblance to Brock Street or its offshoots. It has no parking, its sidewalk (on one side only) doesn’t open directly onto businesses. Almost every business along Hwy. 47 is obliged to provide its own parking lot, which it must landscape and pave at its own expense. You won’t see the BIA planting flowers or putting up banners outside of Vince’s or WalMart, but they routinely do it on Brock Street, and businesses like Vince’s and WalMart are paying the lion’s share of the freight.
BIAs began in Ontario, and in most other parts of North America for that matter, to help preserve the integrity of the historic Main Street, the downtown. With the proliferation of the suburbs, there was an urgent need for urban communities to retain their heart and soul, and for the small businesses which had taken root there to compete against the chain stores in the malls.
That’s how Uxbridge’s BIA began, too, and its goals have remained essentially the same. In that context, the expansion of the membership to Hwy. 47, and the creation of a fee schedule which forced the bigger stores to pay the way for the organization, can be seen as little more than a money grab. Some southern merchants, apparently, believe a strong downtown is vital to business all over Uxbridge. We agree, but we think even the revised fee schedule, as proposed, is still way too imbalanced.
The fees should get very much closer to being equal for everyone. Otherwise, we feel the Hwy. 47 merchants have every reason to withdraw; they’ve paid more than their share already. And let the BIA return to being a Downtown Business Association, as it already is in everything but name.
