By Sarah Wallace

Downtown Prince Albert joins Main Street Program

Mar 25, 2012 | 11:35 AM

Prince Albert is one of four communities chosen to take part in Saskatchewan’s Main Street Program.

The program will allocate $125,000 a year for the next three years for a total of $375,000.

The money will be put towards revitalizing the downtown area of Prince Albert, and will help put on more events and festivals in the downtown area.

The money can be used to renovate buildings or reinstall benches.

The city put in an application for the program about a year ago and will be putting on a public visioning session sometime this spring.

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“We’re getting incredibly excited. We’re about to embark on the visioning session where we’re going to gather community members from all different aspects of the community and get their ideas on paper and actually have some drawings of what they want their downtown to be,” said James Banman, manager of the Prince Albert Downtown Improvement District Association (PADIDA).

“It’s everybody’s downtown, it’s a community downtown, so we want this to be what the community wants.”

Banman said in order for a property to take part in the program they have to put up 50 per cent of the renovation cost so it’s a combination of working with property managers and business owners.

He said Prince Albert has some great historical buildings that could benefit from the program and that our downtown has a beautiful landscape.

“We’re hoping for about a 20 per cent improvement. Over the course of the three years we have to do a minimum of four buildings pre year, so 12 buildings in total. Obviously we want to do more than that, so we’re going to work really hard the property owners and try to get as much done as possible. So we’re hoping for 20 per cent,” Banman said.

He has also been talking with the Police Department about having bylaw officers downtown from May until fall every day and the program will be able to help with that as well.

Last year when this happened they saw a 24 per cent decline in crime downtown and they’d liked to see that much decline again this year.

swallace@rawlco.com