A popular cultural and shopping destination in south Edmonton needs more to be done to improve public safety in the neighbourhood, according to an organization representing local businesses.
On Tuesday, the Old Strathcona Business Association (OSBA) announced it is launching a letter-writing campaign in an effort to have a provincial task force take more action to address public safety in the Whyte Avenue area.
“The work we do as a Business Improvement Area is vital to support economic development in our community, but we are facing huge challenges with public safety that go well beyond what we, as a non-profit association, can do,” OSBA executive director Cherie Klassen said in a news release.
The OSBA says it represents about 600 businesses in what it calls “the Old Strathcona and Whyte Avenue district.”
The letter-writing campaign sees the OSBA encourage business owners in the area to write letters to the task force calling for improvements to be made.
The organization said its letter-writing campaign will target the Edmonton Public Safety and Community Response Task Force, which was created in December to help tackle ongoing concerns regarding addiction, homelessness and public safety.
“We’ve noticed over about the last year or so, we saw a bit of an uptick in some vandalism, with broken windows, all sorts of different kinds of vandalism, increase in the marginalized population, increased crime — city wide — but pretty unprecedented levels for us in Old Strathcona,” Klassen said.
The OSBA said it acknowledges steps have already been taken to address the increased number of concerns about crime and disorder that have been raised in recent months and years, including a city-run grant program to help businesses who have their windows smashed by vandals.
“We started doing some advocacy with the government to advocate for a window repair program, which we were successful in doing, but felt we needed more supports and just felt we haven’t been as successful in getting the supports we feel we need to really address systematic issues.”
Klassen said the letter-writing campaign will be directed at the province’s Public Safety Task Force, and is comprised of four asks. The first is more police presence.
“It would be really nice to have more police presence on the Ave. during business hours — not just in the evenings, but during the day — and after midnight as well, because that’s when a lot of the stuff happens,” said Cory Richard Jones, owner and designer for Lewis Mayhem.
The store opened six months ago, but Richard Jones has worked on Whyte Avenue for 20 years.
“It’s my favourite place to be, but we’ve definitely noticed a shift over the last five years… a lot of the general safety in the area, the robberies, the smashings, and all that kind of stuff. It’s not really what I expected,” she said.
“In the period of three weeks, we were smashed into and robbed twice, and it set us back quite a bit.
“It’s not just the cost of the glass getting smashed and stuff being stolen, it’s having to upgrade all your security. You have to buy roll shutters. We’ve got full security cameras now… The OSBA does have a fund that does help with some of the window breaks — covering half the cost — but it’s just not enough.
“It would be really nice to have some additional funding and supports for small businesses for the break-ins beyond a window repair grant,” Richard Jones said.
“The core of this issue is actually poverty, I think. After COVID, a lot of people were hurting in ways we hadn’t seen a long time and that’s where a lot of the crime is coming from, I think,” she added.
The letter-writing campaign is also asking for a street outreach team.
“We see a real need to address gaps between law enforcement, the marginalized community and business owners,” Klassen explained. “Business owners are becoming front-line workers, and they simply don’t have the tools or the education or any of the skillset or resources to support dealing with marginalized folks.”
The third ask from the business association is an expansion of the window-repair grant.
“We found we’ve only spent about $10,000 out of our $160,000 grant program on window repair because businesses are saying it goes beyond window repair. We need support for other things that are being vandalized… that financial reimbursement,” Klassen said.
She said the fourth ask is a grant that would allow businesses to be proactive about safety and security by purchasing cameras or tamper-proof bins.
“It’s four simple asks. It’s not a huge dollar value attached to all four of them. And we think these four things — as do our businesses and our board — would really be helpful in improving the safety.”
In a statement the Alberta government provided to Global News, the province said it is “continuing to work with its task force partners to develop a multi-faceted strategy to address crime, homelessness, and addiction with the aim of improving public safety throughout Edmonton, for all Edmontonians.”
“When we announced the deployment of Alberta Sheriffs in the city centre, Alberta’s government and our partners were clear that this is only one potential solution, and only part of what needs to be done to address complex, and often related, issues like public safety, addiction, mental health, and homelessness,” said Arthur Green, press secretary for the ministry of public safety and emergency services.
Green added that the Edmonton Public Safety and Community Response Task Force listens “to the perspectives of concerned Edmontonians like the Old Strathcona Business Association” and will use such input when deciding on how to “develop initiatives that will ensure we have safe and welcoming neighbourhoods where people can live, do business and spend their leisure time.”
Klassen said vandalism and break-ins are not victimless crimes.
“These are small business owners. The mom-and-pop shops, they don’t have a lot of money in the bank account.”
Richard Jones said the crime, robberies, vandalism and graffiti hurts her small business and those like hers.
“It takes somebody 30 seconds to smash a window and it takes us six months to recover from that. So if we’re getting smashed into every two weeks, we just can’t survive that way.
“I thought maybe it’s just us — or just alternative shops… but after talking to pretty much any business owner that walks in here, I realize, it’s not just us. When I tell my story, they’re like: ‘Oh yeah, we were smashed into four times last month and it didn’t stop until we bought our roll shutters.”
The OSBA said in an annual survey of its members, the organization concluded “safety is one of their most pressing issues, having decreased continuously over the last few years.”
“While we commend the Edmonton Police Service’s recent initiative to focus on open-air drug use and social disorder as part of their Safer Public Spaces program, it is only a part of a broader safety strategy required in our district,” the OSBA said.
“We have met with various city officials who have acknowledged the issues at hand, however, this campaign shows it is urgent that these issues be addressed immediately.”
On Sept. 11, the EPS issued a news release about its Safer Public Spaces initiative, noting the city’s violent crime rate increased by 13 per cent between 2021 and 2022, with an 18 per cent increase in the number of victims of violent crime in that same period.
“There has been a visible increase in socially unacceptable behaviours on our streets and in places like our parks, pedways and LRT stations,” Chief Dale McFee said at the time. “The impacts of violence and social disorder, including random violence, have grown increasingly prominent.
“We are sending a clear message that safety is the priority. No Edmontonian should be at risk of becoming a victim, and no one should feel that their right to go about their lives within these spaces is compromised.”
–With files from Meaghan Archer, Global News
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