The Tour of Alberta may have raised the profile of Jasper National Park, but for many local businesses extensive road closures in the downtown core hurt their bottom line.
What was supposed to be one of the busiest weekends of the summer, turned out to be a dud for shops and restaurants on Patricia Street and Connaught Drive, as barricades kept people away.
“It was brutal,” said Sam Koebel, owner of SnowDome Coffee Bar and Coin Clean Laundry on Patricia Street. “Anytime there is an event where the road is closed our sales plummet.”
He said business at the coffee bar was normal, but almost no one used his coin laundry services over the course of the two-day closure.
To host the event, the municipality closed several roads on Friday and Saturday, including Patricia Street between Hazel Avenue and Pyramid Lake Road, as well as the westbound lanes of Connaught Drive.
“The events are great for the community, but I think the street closures are overkill,” Koebel said.
Several other business owners had similar complaints.
“Unfortunately it was a disaster,” said Tammy Vathje, owner of Jasper Park Liquor on Connaught Drive.
At her store, revenue was down by nearly half compared to the same time last year.
“It was extremely poor planning on a long weekend when we're at capacity anyway,” she said about the timing of the professional bike race. “The road closures were a nightmare and the few people that I did have come in were complaining.”
Down the road at the west end of town, Wicked Cup was also slow.
Bas Byrd, supervisor of the coffee shop, said business rebounded after the closures were removed on Sunday, but on Friday and Saturday the shop saw very few customers.
It was a similar story at The Grocery People (TGP) on Patricia Street, which estimates it lost about 150 customers on Friday and another 130 on Saturday, forcing the store to send home some of its employees.
“Everything was slow,” said Rick Lagace, the store manager. “It hurt everybody.
“They shouldn't have had it on a long weekend and they should have had it at Centennial Park,” he said, referring to the festival that took place on the Visitor Information Centre lawn.
At the other end of town, outside of the road closures, Robinsons Food said it had a relatively normal weekend.
“We were steady, but we didn't get a big bump or anything like that,” said Ray Robinson, co-owner of the grocery store. “It was great to have the event here, but in terms of economics it certainly didn't do much.
“I think what ended up happening is a lot of people just ended up staying away and the people directly involved in the race brought their own commodities and were focused on racing and didn't really spend a lot of money here,” he said.
Although a number of businesses had dismal weekends, it wasn't all bad news.
“We had a huge weekend, better than expected,” said Jason Munn, co-owner of Syrahs of Jasper.
“I'm not sure if the Tour of Alberta had something to do with that or the road closure or if we just happened to be the lucky ones.”
For Alex Derksen, co-owner of the Jasper Brewing Co. and a major sponsor of the event, business was steady.
“We still had a really strong weekend sales wise,” said Derksen. “It might not have been the record setting weekend we might have thought was coming our way, but it was still really strong.”
He said he wasn't judging the success of the weekend just on his sales numbers, but was looking at the long-term impact the race will have on the town as a whole.
“We were basing [our success] more on the exposure Jasper will get over the next three, four or five years,” he said, referring to the millions of viewers who watched the event around the world.
Mayor Richard Ireland, chair of the local organizing committee, defended the event, but also acknowledged it wasn't a successful weekend for everyone in town.
“We knew going in there would be disruption and inconvenience to some during the event, but the goal was to give international exposure for our community, to drive visitation in the future and, in that regard, I think we succeeded in a spectacular way,” he said during a committee of a whole meeting three days after the event.
“Yes, somebody may have lost a sale or two on the weekend, but they might pick up 10-fold over the next 12 months because people will have been attracted to Jasper, but measuring that and proving that is a challenge,” he said.
Now that the race is over Ireland said the municipality and its partners will seek feedback from the community to assess the event.
“We'll get together and debrief with our other partners and collectively we'll find ways to reach out and solicit responses,” he said.
Sara Hamil, manager of brand and communications for Tourism Jasper, said it's too early to measure the economic impact of the event, but said her team will be putting together a report to determine the overall impacts of the two-day event.
Based on preliminary information, she said coverage of the Tour of Alberta reached more than 126 million viewers around the world.
“Nobody was really sure 100 per cent how it would go, but more than anything we're really grateful to the local businesses for stepping up and participating and getting involved,” she said.
The municipality, Tourism Jasper and Parks Canada each pitched in $60,000 to host event, which is considered a relative bargain considering the Tour of Alberta charges $150,000 to host a finish line and $100,000 to hold a starting line.
The local organizing committee also fundraised more than $70,000 ahead of the event through sponsorships.
“You simply cannot get the international press coverage that we were able to get any other way,” said Ireland.
Pattie Pavlov, manager of the Jasper Park Chamber of Commerce, said the local organizing committee would be conducting a postmortem to determine how the event went.
As part of that process, Pavlov will be soliciting feedback from the chamber's members to determine how the event may have impacted their businesses.
“Postmortems are absolutely vital to moving forward,” said Pavlov, adding she is open to both positive and negative feedback.
Paul Clarke
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