Theming Downtown Belleville
Author: Bruce M Firestone, B Eng (civil), M Eng-Sci, PhD
Bruce is a Real Estate Investment and Business coach, founder of the Ottawa Senators and ROYAL LePAGE Performance Realty broker. He is a champion for Downtown Belleville and owner of 249-253 Front Street.
Murals are a powerful catalyst in terms of reviving and improving urban areas. For example, Jane Golden started a program in Philadelphia to bring graffiti artists “in from the cold.” The Mural Arts Program in Philly employs over 300 artists each year and teaches more than 1,000 young people the art of creating murals at no cost to the students. 5,000+ tourists each year enjoy mural tours in that city.
Click here to read more about Jane Golden’s story and the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program. I would strongly recommend you reach out to her directly at [email protected] or (215) 685-0760. She’s an inspiration and could help you get a MAP launched in your city, town or village.
I am involved in an effort to reinvigorate Downtown Belleville. We have partnered with Loyalist College to bring an accelerator program to the area, opening in January 2022. The business incubator takes up part of the ground floor of a nearly 150-year-old, 3-story multi-use building we are renovating at 249-253 Front Street.
In addition to the startup factory, there will be an adjacent ground floor apartment for their Entrepreneur-In-Residence Program. Startups that are mentored/coached tend to grow faster and survive longer than ones that have to learn everything on their own. Having a mentor live and work in the building is a powerful way to get anywhere from 20 to 40 gigs and gigpreneurs off the ground every year or two.
It doesn’t take many entrepreneurs living and working in your community to completely change the nature of your town. Think about your city, now and in the past: Conjure up an image of the men and women who started local businesses that altered the history (and future) of your neighbourhood, your town, your region, your state or province, maybe even the entire nation? It shouldn’t take you long to think of a few.
A mural can be a work of art, but it can be an advertisement too. Loyalist has our permission to add this mural to the side of our building. To pay for the cost of hiring a muralist and doing the work, I have suggested they reach out for a sponsor or two whose contributions can be discreetly acknowledged by incorporating somehow a thank you on the wall.
This has real value. A billboard can cost a lot – even in Ottawa, one side of a billboard can cost $3,500 a month on a street that has about 15,000 people per day including vehicular and pedestrian traffic, which works out to $7.78 per thousand pairs of eyeballs. This is how a lot of advertising is sold – what is the cost per thousand views. It can range from a low of $5 per thousand for a bus board to $20 for a high-end magazine to $60 for targeted Google ads to $120 per thousand for postcard or flyer delivery by mail.
I am also encouraging Loyalist to sell the naming rights to the incubator as well as naming internal spaces like corridors, offices, boardrooms after sponsors. A startup fund that lends small amounts of capital (say $5,000) to fledgling companies is also a suggestion. These loans would be contingently repaid – for example if the business fails, nothing is owed. If the business succeeds, they pay a 2% royalty on sales for seven years as a giveback to the accelerator. Imagine if one of them achieves say a run rate of $10 million in sales per annum within that time period? A 2% giveback is $200,000 per year so this could be quite the thing for accelerating the accelerator!
Theming
I am big on theming things. I coach a number of folks who put their buildings on home sharing platforms like Airbnb.
One super host I coach put her 1-bedroom log home in the “middle of nowhere” (Wakefield, Quebec) on the platform. She themed the place as a truly Canadian place and billed it as a “romantic getaway”.
The results have been fantastic. The worse the weather gets (Canada has really nice people but terrible weather), the busier she gets! Her realtor told her when she bought the place that she could rent it for $900 to $1,000 a month. Instead, she makes over $5k and sometimes even $6k monthly.
Theming helped with that.
So, why not theme our building on Front Street or, for that matter, the whole of Downtown Belleville?
I’ve been pondering this. Maybe the right theme for 249-253 Front Street is as a “learning” and “making” and “creating” building? We already have Loyalist in the structure, and we are creating other artisan/workshop/makerspaces not to mention a bunch of nice apartments – some of which will be on Airbnb. What if one of our artisan spaces was rented to a cigar box guitar maker? Maybe an Airbnb guest will want to visit and stay awhile. Learn about guitar making? Join an impromptu concert?
I know that Carolyn Butts and her business and life partner, Hans Honegger, reinvented Tamworth, a tiny town not too far from TO and Belleville. They bought old, beat-up buildings that no one else wanted and fixed them up for the medium term rental market and made both affordable residential apartments and workshops available where creatives could come, write their magnum opus, create their next new product or service, or meet with their teams in a quiet setting. It’s remade not only Tamworth but Carolyn and Hans’ life too. Read more here.
Hobart, New York, a village of fewer than 500-people, is home to not one or two bookstores but five indie shops along their main street, which has totally remade their town. People from NYC and Boston (a few hours away by car) flock there to purchase “a leather-bound collection of classical verse, or a set of classic political essays.”
Obviously, their theme is books and learning and experiences based on that. As Bill Bryson has written, “Books are TV for smart people.”
Or how about only slightly larger Coombs, BC? A Norwegian couple settled in this Vancouver Island community more than two generations ago. They set up an old country store with a sod roof. Grass roofs were common in Norway and cheap, so they brought this technology with them long before green roofs became a thing. The only problem is grass grows and you do not want to get up on a sloped roof with a lawn mower. Unless of course you feel like cutting off some toes or your whole foot in a horrible accident.
So, instead, they did what they did in the old country – they bought some goats and let them loose every summer to live on their roof to eat their grass instead. Goats are much steadier on their four hooves than humans on their two spindly legs.
The place became knows as goats-on-the-roof and, if you can believe it, it became one of the top tourist attractions on the island.
Downtown Belleville = ?
So, what theme might work for Downtown Belleville? Hmm, I’m not sure. Let’s look at some others first.
- Prince Edward County, known as Ontario’s wine country
- Ottawa, the Nation’s capital, Winterlude
- Toronto, the Province’s capital, TIFF
- New Orleans, bourbon/jazz/Mardi Gras/hurricanes
- Calgary, Stampede
- Savannah, home to Forest Gump
- Quebec City, Winter Carnival
- Vegas, instant weddings and even quicker divorces
Now let’s look at Downtown Belleville.
- Home to gigpreneurs
- Where makers go to affordably live-work-play-learn-create-socialize
- Foodie culture
- The experience district
- Crafting center
- Escape from Toronto, remote work hub
- Ice fishing on the Bay of Quinte
I really have no clue how to pick just one, do you???
Prof Bruce
ABOUT BRUCE
Bruce M Firestone, B Eng (civil), M Eng-Sci, PhD
Real Estate Investment and Business coach
Ottawa Senators founder
ROYAL LePAGE Performance Realty broker
613-762-8884
[email protected]
brucemfirestone.com
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