LISTEN: Business improvement district discusses safety in downtown Saskatoon

Concerns surrounding Saskatoon’s downtown continue to grow as viral posts about the condition of Midtown Mall and social media videos on shoplifting continue to circulate.

Executive director of the Downtown Saskatoon Business Improvement District, Shawna Nelson, joined the Evan Bray Show to share her point of view.

Read more:

• Saskatoon police respond to assault, robbery at Midtown Mall
• Midtown mall hits record sales while improving safety, manager says
• Saskatoon police briefs: Man arrested after mugging in mall stairwell

Listen to the full interview, or read the transcript below:

The following questions and answers have been edited for length and clarity.

EVAN BRAY: What are you hearing from people that are part of your crew about downtown?

SHAWNA NELSON: I talked to my colleagues in Canada, we have some great things downtown and with the development, with the events, the festivals, we have, in the last few years, seen an increase in some social street level disorder that we are facing in the community. Not only downtown, but (in) our whole city, we need to basically look at this and address it as a whole. When I listen to my business owners daily – multiple texts, multiple phone calls – of things that are happening to them, it’s becoming a huge stressor in just being able to survive, let alone thrive, in their businesses.

What are you hearing? Are people changing hours? Are they worried about decreased customers? What are the impacts that your businesses are seeing?

NELSON: Our businesses are seeing less traffic coming by their doors. They’re having to lock their doors. They’re having difficulty trying to find staff because staff don’t want to work downtown. They’re having to be short-staffed, and they have to lock their doors because of stuff. People just come in and grab and go and go to the next door, grab and go. So, yeah, they’re locking doors. They’re having to put a bell outside or a phone number to have access to their businesses. They’re seeing, visibly, what is going on the streets daily, right in front of their benches, right in front of their doors, right beside their clients cars, and what’s happening. They are burnt out and they want their voices to be heard, and they want some action on the streets for themselves to feel safe – not only for them, but also for their clients and their customers.

Shops, stores and restaurants, deciding to relocate elsewhere in the city: Is that a problem you’re up against?

NELSON: I lost five businesses in the last month. I’m having business owners tell me that it’s really hard for them to reconsider signing another lease. They’re not even signing three- or five-year leases. When you have property owners that are trying to lease their property and when you see the social disorder right on the front steps, that’s not sending a great message to those who are thinking that this is the place that they want to open up their business.

I know vacancies in downtown Saskatoon is an issue in a couple of different areas. This can’t make it easier to fill those storefronts.

NELSON: We do have one of the highest vacancies downtown than any other in some of the major cities in Canada. So yes, it does create a challenge.

Is it policing? Is it the City of Saskatoon regulation? What do we need to do here?

NELSON: In Regina, their Point in Time count for homelessness went down. Ours went up considerably. We’re inheriting the province’s homelessness. Our police, they are stretched. I see that. They are doing what they can with what they have. We’re going to see probably more challenges this summer, and we can’t just do the same that we did last summer. We need to take a look at a lot of different layers of approaches here, and we need to see more presence. We need to see more enforcement – we need a short term and a long term – and that means everybody, every level of government, every agency, ourselves, a stakeholder. We need to be at the table to figure out how we’re going to do this.

I want to hear your thoughts on why we need to fix this (because) it’s bigger than just the downtown businesses in Saskatoon.

NELSON: Downtown is your front door to our city. We are the largest city in this province, and we have to provide our first impression of this province. We need to make sure that we take care of our core. As you know, if your apple is rotten at the core, it’s going to start to spread, and we are already seeing it. So everyone in this city, in this community, in this province, needs to take care of the downtown.

We’re talking about this new Downtown Event and Entertainment District (DEED). If and when this goes ahead, which I know is still potentially a couple of years away, all the more reason to get this problem fixed.

NELSON: Well the DEED, but also I have property owners and I’ve got developers. We want to see more residential living as well. Yes, the DEED, but if you’re going to start putting services in and around the DEED well, that’s just sort of going against what you’re trying to sell downtown, in regards to vibrant and energetic and welcoming, safe downtown.