Historic streets need some brightening up

Merchants along Black Diamond’s historic street are looking to add a splash of colour to the boomtown look.

Six merchants and the Town of Black Diamond discussed sprucing up the historic downtown with a fresh coat of paint on April 21.

At a business meeting last summer, the Town heard some merchants were interested in painting their buildings and scheduled the meeting this spring to discuss colour schemes and other ideas to brighten the historic appeal.

“Most of the buildings, their paint is about 10 years old,” said David Petrovich, the Town’s economic development manager. “It’s faded. We wanted to liven it up.”

The business-driven initiative, facilitated by the Town, aims to get merchants thinking about adding a fresh coat of paint to their business, said Petrovich.

“As buildings are getting older we would encourage people if you want customers you have to look open for business and you have to look inviting,” he said. “If five years down the road the paint is really worn they might not think this is as vibrant of a town as business owners would like. It’s all about making our town look and feel as vibrant as it is.”

Petrovich hopes the meeting will prompt merchants to begin a conversation.

“What would be great is if people started talking neighbor-to-neighbour saying, ‘What colour are you thinking of doing your building and how can we complement each other?’” he said. “It’s all about maintaining the vitality of our downtown. We want to keep it growing and keep it exciting. We need easy ways to do it.”

The Town isn’t putting money towards painting the downtown businesses, but Petrovich said the discussion could open up to the Town assisting in beautification efforts in the future.

“As people start sprucing it up they might start asking more things to be involved in the downtown,” he said, adding such things as bike racks, benches and hanging baskets were discussed briefly.

Jason Spicer, co-owner of the Pharmasave, plans to start the conversation with merchants around him.

“Apparently the Sheep River Centre is planning to add some paint to theirs right next to me,” said Spicer. “I would be very interested to meet with them to see what they are doing. See what the guys next door are planning on doing and see if you can work with colour schematics from building to building to make them complement one another in a more vibrant way.”

Spicer, who has owned Pharmasave with wife Dierdre for eight years, said they’d been discussing painting the building’s exterior in the near future.

He added merchants on his street face restrictions as to what they can place in front of their businesses, as they’re located on a provincial highway.

“I’ve learned that rather than becoming beat down with all the bureaucracy in terms of not being able to do things let’s take things we can do and improve and do those forefront, especially in a centre like this that is relatively low dollars compared to the incentive of the revitalization program 12 years ago,” he said.

“Let’s work with what we’ve got.”

Rod Ross, Black Diamond’s planning and development officer, said changing street lights or adding benches to the front of businesses along Highway 22 is a complex issue, as the property in front of those businesses is under the control of the Department of Alberta Transportation.

“Any work in that right of way requires approval of the Province,” he said.

Yet, just focusing on colour can be enough to make a difference to the appearance of the businesses, Ross said.

He presented a colour pallet to the merchants and discussed how colours can complement each other. He also used an online colour visualizer to show what the businesses would look like in various colours.

“It’s a very cost effective way to change the look and feel of the street, freshen it up relatively inexpensively,” he said. “We wanted to keep it limited to colour rather than branch it off into other aspects. Other street enhancements can become quite expensive, replacing sidewalks or changing out your light standards, that sort of thing.”

Since the Town established historic downtown design standards more than a decade ago, Ross said merchants are limited to about 120 colours they can paint their businesses.

“It’s a pretty broad colour pallet,” he said, adding the colours are typical of arts and craft style buildings from the turn of the century.