Patricia Street petition to show truth: business owner

Cam Jenkins, owner of Jasper Wine Merchants, is putting together a petition to give the Jasper town council a “real idea” of what Patricia Street businesses think about the future possibility of closing the street.

The businessman wrote the petition to round up support of other owners and tell council that if the street is ever closed again, organizers must go about it differently.

He said there was a “total lack of communication” from the Jasper Chamber of Tourism and Commerce leading up to the two street closures during the Jasper in January festival, and that some businesses “knew nothing” about the street parties. 

Helen Kelleher-Empey, general manager of Jasper Tourism and Commerce, apologized for any businesses that may not have received all the communications. However, she also said that in early January the Chamber “did go around and personally hand-deliver letters to every business telling them what was happening.”

According to Jenkins, who is not a Chamber member, he and some other business owners were unaware of the intention to go ahead with the party until an advertisement for the party was printed in an early January edition of The Fitzhugh.

Jenkins, who said he’s concerned that businesses were left to deal with a situation that resulted in lower profits for the popular weekends, thinks it’s important the municipality is told the truth about how businesses feel about the street closure because feedback from the Chamber will be skewed. 

“What I’m trying to do is I’m trying to get something in front of council before the chamber goes in there and says, ‘All is well in utopia’,” said Jenkins, who believes the events just “didn’t go very well. There was a real lack of communication, the business community feels pretty disenfranchised throughout the whole process, because this is our livelihood.”

He said he believes that he will be able to get 90 per cent of the businesses on Patricia Street to sign the petition, with around 15 already signing. 

A letter, which was issued to all businesses on Patricia Street in October 2008 and stated the road would be closed between 5 p.m. and 11 p.m., requested a signature from business owners. All business owners agreed to the street closure except for two, according to Kelleher-Empey.

Jenkins said communication from the chamber was misleading. “Quite a few of us on Patricia Street were led to believe that the closure during Jasper in January was going to happen in a particular way,” he said.

He expressed concern that the roads were then closed prior to 5 p.m., an issue which Doug Rodwell, chief bylaw officer, called a “logistical and public safety issue... what our thoughts were was that we can’t mix vehicles and pedestrians.”

According to Rodwell, the roads were blocked at 2 p.m. so that any vehicles remaining at 4 p.m. could be towed from the street.

Another issue for Jenkins is that outside vendors were brought into Jasper to help promote the evening that could have resulted in a loss of profit for local businesses. For example, he said, a coffee van giving away free samples was parked outside a local coffee shop. “It absolutely killed them,” he said.

Jenkins, who is passionate about the topic, believes a permanent closure of Patricia Street, an idea that’s been discussed at various Community Sustainability Plan events, would see the end of many businesses on the street and thinks the Chamber has a long way to go to convincing businesses closing the street at all is a good idea, due to the previous lack of co-ordination and communication.