Merchant engagement
Christopher Beland
I'd like to revive an idea from the early days of the DSNC: creating a Business Interest Committee that would bring together Davis Square businesses and interested residents to talk about problems and solutions. I've added this to the agenda for the next DSNC board meeting, but am curious what others think and if there are any other ideas.
Frank's last email highlights a good example of what isn't working well now:
I'm worried about the cynicism that would start to grow among members, potential members or key groups like the Merchants Group if we were to continue to take official actions with a shockingly low number of proponents or buy-in.
I use the Elmway Action vote as background for why I think we need to shore up our structure, not as a criticism of the Elmway Action Group.
If I remember correctly, we heard from 5 businesses for the Elm Street Quick Build project, of which 3 seemed OK with the design (but had questions and concerns we were able to address), and 2 were against. What I find a bit shocking is how little engagement we got from businesses who would be directly affected by the project. Perhaps that is an indication that most think it would do no harm, but I do think it is worthwhile to think about how we could improve merchant engagement, and I agree our structures could use tweaking.
The Elmway Action Group gave a presentation to the Davis Square Merchants Association, and got one brief comment on the spot. Our time slot was limited, and we were expecting to come back the next month for a full discussion. Instead, due to an appearance by the mayor, we got completely bumped off the agenda and not invited back. The two businesses who ended up opposing the project were at that meeting, but didn't give us any feedback on it until the day of the formal vote, despite EAG giving them an invitation to the Dragon Pizza event and an email address and phone number they could use to discuss the project at their convenience. It seems bizarre to me that the businesses in the project area were receptive to it, but those outside the project area thought it would bad for business.
I think it would have been helpful if we had been able to collect more info from oppositional businesses early on. Then we would have been able to collect more real-world data to see if they were well-founded. It would also have been helpful to get the businesses on different sides of the issue in the same room to explore this apparent disconnect. Were the concerns expressed by opposition businesses not held by the businesses in the project area because the fears were unrealistic? Do different types of businesses need different things from their streetscapes? Do different business owners simply have different preferences or predictions?
The Davis Square Merchants Association meetings are problematic; they seem to be controlled by the city's Economic Development Division (which is how we got booted from the agenda) and residents generally aren't welcome. DSMA leadership seems to want DSNC to engage with businesses more, but I haven't heard any concrete proposal on how to accomplish that, despite asking repeatedly.
A DSNC Business Interest Committee would have been a good forum to bring the Elm Street project and a follow-on project to create a parking map for Davis Square (which I'm working on now). I would like to talk about creating a Business Improvement District, which I've heard mumblings of support for. Businesses have a lot of concerns about homelessness, public drug use, public safety, and recent break-ins. We also need some way to gather concerns about construction impacts, desired mitigation, and community benefits for development projects.
Chris