People-Focused Main Street
Camrose's historic downtown is a genuinely beautiful part of our City, but a failure to account for and respond to the realities of the 21st century have deeply undermined our local businesses - and it's time to think ambitiously about how to change that.
The Problem
Camrose's Main Street is a genuinely beautiful street, but it's hampered by the fact that it's not really built for how we experience Camrose today. Driving down Main Street is often just not a pleasant experience for most drivers in Camrose - and parking is even worse. Compare this with how we've built infrastructure for big businesses like Walmart, with massive parking lots and easy access, and it's easy to see that Main Street is at a huge disadvantage. Main Street is an area that relies on pedestrians and accessibility, and right now, the deck is stacked against them.
The Cause
Camrose's city planning policies have neglected Main Street's actual needs, and have left it in a position where big businesses avoid it and local businesses are left to fight tooth and nail just to survive. Couple this with a lack of investment in modernizing our infrastructure, and we're seeing Main Street's margins shrink more and more while the big businesses grow. The cause of the problem is a short-sighted, single-minded approach to city planning - but it's fixable.
My Proposal
My proposal is to work with the downtown business community as well as local residents to develop and approve a plan for Camrose's Main Street (50th Street) to be re-classified as a pedestrian-only street. My initial proposal would be for this to stretch from 48A Avenue in the south to 51 Avenue in the north, and to maintain this status year-round - however, depending on consultation with the groups mentioned before, this can absolutely be amended to be seasonal or cover more/less blocks.
My proposal would include using 2026 as a test year for this project to give businesses in the area as well as residents time to experiment with the new format and see if they like it before full-on committing to anything. Past experiments with pedestrianizing Main Street have been received positively, and I believe that a longer-term experiment is justified at this point. A pedestrian-only downtown would mean that, outside of accessibility-based vehicles like motorized scooters or wheelchairs, the entire street would be free of vehicles. This would also include creating sub-plots for each of the existing plots of land on the street, which would include an area in front of each business that they would be allowed to either use themselves for something like a patio or an outdoor exhibition, or rent to kiosks that can operate as a separate entity.
The Outcome
The outcome of this will be a more invigorated, inviting, and community-centric Main Street. It will allow us to make sure our local businesses are supported and grown in ways that ensure long-term economic viability and help build a vibrant community full of local flavour. It will provide a more accessible place for Camrosians to socialize and shop, and will reduce the cost of maintaining downtown infrastructure.
The outcome will not be to eliminate cars from Camrose, and I wish to make that clear as well. In no way do I believe that personal vehicles are going away anytime soon, and this policy is not anti-car - it is pro-community, pro-local business, and pro-residents. I know there are concerns from many that this kind of policy is emblematic of an attack on personal vehicles, and I want to assure you upfront that consultation with the downtown business community as well as residents of the City will absolutely factor this element into the final proposal.