Downtown Moncton looks at ways to draw the community back to city’s core

Downtown Moncton Centre-ville is inviting the community to weigh in on the future of the area.

The organization is in the process of updating its strategic plan with a big focus on bringing people back down to the city’s core.

“I think like anything else, you fix what you focus on,” said executive director Patrick Richard.

“If we don’t pay any attention to the downtown, which is kind of what happened during the pandemic, people boarded up, and they had to. (They) went home and worked from home. We want to invite them back down. It’s kind of like the chicken and the egg right? There’s nothing going on so there’s no body here, there’s no body here because there’s nothing going on.”

Richard says the focus from 2020 to now has changed drastically and the current plan, which is based on three pillars — curate, promote and administer the downtown — is now outdated.

“We obviously have social issues in the downtown, so our role has been pretty minimal, I’m going to say, to this point,” he said.

A street in downtown Moncton is pictured on Feb. 13, 2024.

“We’ve tried to go the advocacy route. We’ve kind of shifted a little bit our tactics to now have our enviro-team that cleans the downtown, so maybe a continuation of that – a bigger focus on clean and safe I think is going to be really important going forward.”

Bringing the community and businesses to the table, an in-personal consultation was held on Tuesday on top of an online survey.

Overall, Richard says the survey asks about how often people frequent the downtown, how often do people plan to be downtown, and what residents think the downtown should look like moving forward.

“I think a big part of it is to change the perceptive of downtown. People have kind of a bad bias towards downtown right now and it’s really not the reality,” said Jacques Allain, co-owner of Halo Donuts

In terms of what he would like to see done in the future, he thinks getting people to explore downtown more is going to be a big help.

People attend a public meeting from Downtown Moncton Centre-ville on Feb. 13, 2024.

“I’d really like to see more accessibility when it comes to our sidewalks and being accessible to people with disabilities, and that separation of downtown that’s kind of happening right now — where main street and St. George feels like two totally different downtowns — bring that together,” he said.

During Tuesday’s meeting, participants were divided up into tables to brainstorm and have discussions in smaller groups.

Kim Rayowrth, the managing director at Moncton’s Capitol Theatre said she was encouraged to hear so much positivity come out about the downtown.

She also agrees that one of the biggest barriers is changing the current narrative the surrounds the area.

“We’re downtown every day. We’re in the company of 800 people that attend a sold out show at the Capitol, we’ve not had any reports of anyone being harmed or there being any threats of violence,” she said.

Adding, “I think that that message should really continue to go forward — that as we continue to gather in whatever way, in the celebration of arts and culture, visiting businesses in the downtown — people are met with people that are happy to spend time together.”

In terms of what she would like to see focused on during the updated strategic plan she points to even more opportunities for people to come together and more people returning to work at the downtown offices.

In total about 50 people showed up to the in-person meeting, but Monctonians are also encouraged to have their say online, so that Downtown Moncton Centre-ville can really see what’s important to the community.

“We’re definitely in a unique scenario,” said Richard.

“As an organization we represent, of course, the downtown Moncton merchants, but we also are caretakers of this area, of this geography, so it’s important for us to take care or to hear from the visitors, residents, the business owners because it’s everybody’s space.”

As for what happens next, Richard says the online survey is open until Feb. 19 for people to weigh in, then at the end of March staff and board members will get together to discuss, and finally the updated plan will be unveiled at the end of April during their Annual General Meeting.

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