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St. Albert to explore "botanic arts" brand

St. Albert could be Alberta’s botanic arts capital after a weeklong branding charette identified a gardening-related brand as the best option for attracting tourists and spurring economic development.

St. Albert could be Alberta’s botanic arts capital after a weeklong branding charette identified a gardening-related brand as the best option for attracting tourists and spurring economic development.

The city hired a consultant earlier this year to help identify what St. Albert could use as a brand to market itself in the Capital region and beyond. After three days of public input through interviews, meetings and online surveys, the “botanic arts” emerged as the one with the most potential.

“The botanic arts is the strongest economic driver of the various branding options and the anchor business is already here and investing heavily in the brand,” explained Roger Brooks, the head of Seattle-based Destination Development International.

Brooks first visited St. Albert to do an assessment in May 2008. In January he presented his views in a public forum, suggesting that a brand based on gardening would be the strongest, mainly because Hole’s Greenhouse already attracts visitors from all over Alberta and even outside the province. Its draw will only increase once it’s completed a new multi-million dollar facility in South Riel, he said.

Brooks’ team will now study the feasibility of a botanic arts brand. He’ll return to St. Albert in October with a proposed plan for implementation.

Mayor Nolan Crouse is pleased that gardening has morphed into botanic arts, a term with much broader application.

“I think it’s going in the right direction,” he said. “It’s got so much potential for what’s really driving this, which is economic and tourism development.”

St. Albert Chamber of Commerce president and CEO Lynda Moffat thinks the brand could attract other businesses related to gardening and growing.

“Hopefully with the whole community getting behind it, we can start to see some spinoff business locating here,” she said.

In a public meeting Thursday evening, Brooks suggested that botanic arts could be combined with visual and performance arts into one arts brand. The focus narrowed to include just botanic arts after a meeting with St. Albert’s branding committee on Friday.

“It was the overwhelming feeling around the table that the botanic arts had the most potential rather than having a brand that was a little bit broader,” said Joan Barber, St. Albert’s tourism development co-ordinator.

With the term botanic arts, the branding committee is hoping to emphasize anything related to greenness and growing. It’s hoped that the tourist season could extend past the few months of actual gardening through activities like classes in the winter.

Even though the city now has a brand direction to explore, the brand decision isn’t final, Barber stressed. The public can still provide input through an online survey on the city’s website or by e-mailing Destination Development at [email protected].

“Ultimately it will be the people of St. Albert that decide what the brand is,” Barber said.

Based on public opinion gathered this week, the consulting team identified four potential brands as having the most support: children’s activities, recreation, the arts and gardening.

While arts isn’t as strong as gardening, Brooks felt that St. Albert has some strengths to support an arts brand: numerous downtown art galleries, the annual Art Walk, the Arden Theatre and children’s theatre.

Brooks’ team felt that children and recreation weren’t feasible brands because St. Albert doesn’t have enough assets to set it apart from other communities. Also, those brands either don’t generate much revenue or require too much investment in additional facilities, he said.

The city is paying Brooks’ firm $70,000 USD for his services.

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