Rob: The pedestrian main drags in Canmore and Banff have gone pretty well, at least as far as numbers of visitors go and the ability to space out and for businesses to add additional space. They’ve gone so well, in fact, that some Banff Avenue businesses would like to see that closure extended to maybe even as far as Halloween.

Tanya: Several businesses appearing in front of Banff council and writing letters to ask for consideration to have the pedestrian zone expanded. Summer doesn’t end at the beginning of September. There are a lot of good opportunities for people to still be outdoors all the way into October. Businesses are trying to highlight that fact and that they could still take advantage of a road closure to help with what’s been a very challenging year. One interesting thing I heard from the presentations was a better sense of optimism for the future as a result of being able to utilize that outdoor space .

Rob: Right now Banff Avenue is set to transition back into a vehicle area starting on September 11th. There seems logistically to be some potential support for maybe stretching it out another week to September 18th. Could it go longer? Some voices that I feel are missing so far from this discussion and from the letters and comments submitted to council are the businesses that aren’t located on Banff Avenue. What about Bear Street? What about Cascade Shops? How are they doing? Are they losing traffic? Do considerations need to be made for the business community as a whole and not just those on two blocks of Banff Avenue?

Tanya: What else might the municipality be considering to help those that haven’t seen a benefit from it?

Filed under: Banff, Banff Ave, Banff Council, Mountain Insider