If the St. Albert Chamber of Commerce gets its way, downtown St. Albert will soon cease to exist.
The local business group has rebranded the area as the Perron District and will soon be seeking official approval from city council. The chamber is hoping the new words catch on and that the term downtown will be reserved for the history books.
“We wanted to brand [the area] as something other than downtown because everybody has a downtown,” said chamber CEO Lynda Moffat.
With the new brand, the chamber is hoping to forge an identity that has the drawing power of an Old Strathcona or Whyte Avenue.
“The idea is if we have an identity, then it becomes a destination for people to come to,” said Carmen Bokenfohr, a downtown business owner who helped spearhead the rebranding effort.
The name of the district comes from Perron Street, one of the downtown’s main streets. The street itself is named after Fleuri Perron, St. Albert’s second mayor who operated a hotel and general store on the street in the early 1900s.
“We’re very proud to be using that name because he was one of our early entrepreneurs and he was a huge community supporter back in the day when he had the store downtown,” Moffat said.
“We’re looking to get a name that’s catchy, that has some historical significance to it that runs off people’s mouths,” said Joe Becigneul, who heads the chamber’s downtown committee.
A recently completed logo is based on the old style lampposts used downtown.
Becigneul will be speaking at an upcoming city council meeting to ask that these lampposts be reserved for exclusive downtown use and that the city start referring to downtown as the Perron District.
Mayor Nolan Crouse said he was aware that the chamber has been working on a new brand for the past year or so. He loves the name but isn’t sure it should apply to the whole downtown.
“If Perron District includes St. Thomas Street and St. Anne Street then I think that’s different. That isn’t what my understanding [was,]” Crouse said.
“I don’t know. I’d have to just think through that.”
The city is in the process of reviewing its Downtown Area Redevelopment Plan (DARP), which defines the downtown area and lays out goals for its future development. Council is expected to receive a report on DARP in late May.
Another development to come out of the chamber’s rebranding effort is a renaming of its downtown committee to the Perron District Business Association, Becigneul said.
