Almost one year ago, local BIAs and municipal authorities amalgamated to create the new ByWard Market District Authority (BMDA), an overseeing body to facilitate improvement and communication between residents, tourists and businesses in the government. Since then, the city has seen a lot of changes, including varying levels of investment from upper levels of government and, more recently, political shifts at Parliament Hill.
Zachary Dayler is the executive director of the BMDA, and he comes from a background in politics, community-building and economic development, so he says it takes a lot to surprise him.
For the last year, he and his team have been working to bring a new vision to life for the ByWard Market — one that meets the expectations of residents, tourists and business owners alike. To mark the one-year anniversary of the BMDA, he sat down with Ottawa Compass to talk about what the journey has been and what’s ahead.
The ByWard Market District Authority has been around for almost a year now. Can you tell me a bit about yourself and the team behind it?
Well, it’s definitely a team effort. I’ve had the opportunity to work in Ottawa for a little over 15 years now, at a variety of different levels, from the BIA level to the federal political level to the community development and economic development side of things.
It really is an incredible city when we think about how it’s the biggest small town you’ve ever been in. I’ve working in politics, and nowhere else in Canada is federal politics, local politics, right? The dynamic of Ottawa is really fun to work in, but I think it also creates significant challenges, because there’s a wide breadth of interpretations as to what the capital should be.
At the end of the day, the capital is for residents to live in, and we can’t lose sight of that. The ByWard Market was our first public space here in Ottawa about 200 years ago.
I came to be here through a general recruitment process about five years ago. I started with Ottawa Markets, and came over from a federal politician’s office, the local Ottawa Centre MP at that time. My degrees are in urban planning and political science, so doing something like operating a municipal services corporation is a nice marriage of those skills, and what we’re trying to do here with the BMDA, and as a team, is really develop a larger district authority.
When you look at our seven-point mandate, the number one thing is revitalize the ByWard Market for visitors and residents. This is a project that really has been been talked about for the better part of 15, 20 years. I’s about time that we start seeing those investments and obviously, ByWard really got motivated in terms of the revitalization effort with the Public Realm Plan that came out and which was accepted there in 2019, and that really sets the future direction for this area.
I like to make the joke, ‘have no illusions; this is about pedestrianization.’ That’s really where we’re going in this area. I’s transitioning in that revitalization effort to a public market… A place where people come together, where they connect, where you can buy goods from small vendors. There’s a farmer presence, there’s an entertainment presence, and it’s a lively space.
In Canada, we’re catching up to that idea. I think what makes the public space in Ottawa so dynamic, to go full-circle to what we were saying about it being a federal town, is we do see federal politics here, from immigration to opposition to those topics.
But where do those conversations happen? They happen in public space, all around the world, and so when we see the general shift in immigration levels and whatnot, coming into Canada, this is a whole population of people who understand public space way better than we do, right?
When you see new Canadians coming out into the Market, and they’re looking to engage in conversation. We have the role as the BMDA to provide those opportunities for conversation in public.
We facilitate that through events and beautification and the public realm. We want to plan all those things to just sort of welcome people into this space. We often talk about that in a celebratory capacity, but by words also one of the number one spots that that protests march through.
That’s why the district authority was put in place: to be the stewards of that. We’re just coming through the end of our first year. think there are a lot of successes we can point to, but a lot of lessons learned as well.
What’s one of the challenges or successes that is top of mind right now?
Well, for example, we’re seeing an increase of foot traffic in through the area, and return visits are a big thing. Where we’re challenged in retail environments is converting on those sales. Yeah, more people are there. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that more spending is there.
The pandemic reinforced the behaviour that we were trying to get out of. And so, you know, it’s a steady process of just trying to remind people that if all you support is Amazon, that’s all that will be there.
I don’t think people really understand that concept. Landlords, cities and business groups all have a responsibility to try and reduce costs and lower the pressure on on the businesses operating. But ultimately, at the end of the day, we have a lot of compounding influences that that impact the area, and so as the District Authority, we want to just do our best to sort of work between the noise and keep moving forward.
When the BMDA was first born, what was the situation that you inherited here?
You had a business improvement area, the municipal services corporation, Ottawa Markets. You obviously have the NCC operating, as well as the City and larger business groups operating.
So the role of the authority was to amalgamate the BIA and Ottawa Markets into a central agency that focused on that revitalization.
We’re here to enhance the services that the city is already doing. The city is street cleaning and plaza flushing, but our effort is to add on top of that, to bring this area back to a space it deserves.
We have 18.9 million visits through. That’s not 18.9 million visitors, but that’s trips through. That’s a lot of wear and tear on an environment. Some of the things that we really focus on beautification. So in year one, we took an effort to refresh a number of the heritage assets, like repainting lighting poles, addressing a number of the street trees and tree wells.
We increased plaza flushing and garbage collection, along with added measures for community safety and wellbeing, partnering with the Block Leaders Program community engagement team, We also saw the moving of the neighbourhood Operations Center into ByWard.
So next year, we need to take more of a focus on those other areas in the district, like Clarence Street, St Patrick Street and Dalhousie Street. What can we do from the lessons learned around the core market area, which is the anchor draw, to continue to move people to and through?
We’re also going to be doing a census of the district to really know who’s here and who’s not here. Are we talking about more residents in our boundary? More businesses? Is it an equal threshold? What is also the business mix here?
We know retail and food service is sort of a balancing act, so I think through the first year, we were able to set up a lot of the really solid processes in terms of operating with the city and building those connections. Now, in year two, it’s really about continuing to amp up and build those things. We have the flexibility to deploy a synthetic rink, we have the flexibility to bring in some illuminating elements. We have programming that we bring in. So all of those things are only going to continue to professionalize. And I think that’s quite exciting,
Did you find a lack of unified authority was challenging for the businesses in the area?
I think the challenge that a lot of businesses have is they’re trying to do the best that they can for their product and their business model.
The challenge there is, there’s going to be a variety of interpretations as to what’s going to work, why it’s going to work, and why you should do it. And so our focus is to try and create that balance. And that’s always a struggle.
There are challenges of, ‘This worked in my business, this is going to work district-wide.’ Not to say that it wouldn’t, but it’s how do we take those lessons in the deep understanding of the neighbourhood and district that these folks have, and apply them to the overall recruitment of people back down here to the downtown core?
I think businesses are rightfully frustrated. Ottawa has routinely and continually expanded our boundary, and what that does is it just, frankly, takes focus off of your downtown core and focuses it on the other areas.
With the Downtown Action Plan that the Ottawa Board of Trade put out, which is critical, the number one thing they’re calling for is 50,000 new residents downtown, and that means density.
When we look at onboarding or developing some of these plans, the real missing piece is density, and that’s where ByWard has a bit of a competitive advantage.
The ByWard Market has also been grappling with some social issues, namely homelessness, mental illness and addiction. What is the BMDA’s role in addressing this challenges?
I like to use the words “steward” and “caretaker”. The district authority plays a significant role in connecting people, providing a space for conversations, and inputting intel into those conversations.
We can be advising the city saying, ‘Let’s say you want to do X, Y and Z, but that’s going to take 76 parking spots offline. We know this is going to be a problem.’ We’re not saying don’t do it, but let’s talk through that issue to navigate it.
We just want to deliver services that make the conditions successful for businesses, residents, and in a lot of cases, that’s simply attention. Cleaning up the area.
The folks that live on the street in the area are as much residents as people who live in the condos. They’re here every single day. They’re accessing the services and have a better sense of what’s happening in the area, in a lot of cases, than you know some of the residents because they live on the street.
We don’t lean into it from a position of politics and saying, ‘This policy is bad.’ We lean into it from the perspective of, ‘public space is for everyone.’ So we’re not going to sit here and say that we don’t want you in our public space. That’s not how that works. We look at it and we say, ‘Well, people are struggling in our public space, so how do we connect them with things that make it easier for them to operate, not only in our public space, but public space in general?’
We’ve seen some really good success with the Block Leaders Program, which is run out of Ottawa Inner City Health. That’s something where the role is that the BMDA will be exploring how we can financially support some shifts into the future. Basically what we do is we get out of the way and support a good initiative or help connect them.
One program was starting up and wanted to expand, so we connected the project team with some businesses so they have an honest conversation.
We also have to acknowledge that the social issue is one that’s across communites around the world, frankly, and we’re not going to address it by thinking it’s a quick solution. We’re not social workers, we’re place makers, we’re beautification experts, we’re planners, but we hopefully can create the connections,
What are some supports or resources that are coming through the pipeline, whether it’s at City Hall or Queen’s Park or even at Parliament Hill, that you’re keeping your eye on?
The $10 million of provincial funding is critical. We have a great partnership and relationship with Ottawa Tourism, and we are having ongoing conversations with them about how we can work to support their work, and their revitalization effort is incredibly important from a tourism perspective in this area.
We’re also looking very closely at the City of Ottawa and the Ottawa Board of Trade review of the Downtown Action Agenda and the establishment of an arts and entertainment district that goes hand-in-hand with the idea of 50,000 people downtown.
When you look at investments coming in, these are all really significant opportunities to connect federal institutions and municipal institutions. We are sitting right between the National Gallery and the Ottawa Art Gallery. We’d be wild not to try and make that connection and that partnership.
Obviously, a priority at the federal level is seeing investment in our capital. There are a lot of capital asks from the municipality, so I’m not going to wade into that. I’ll defer my comments to the mayor, but we hope that whatever the next iteration of the federal government is, there’s going to be strong support for continuing this revitalization work, whether it be through Infrastructure Canada or whether it be through Heritage. When you have an entity like the BMDA that is apolitical, we can navigate these terms, all with the interest of bettering public space.
Was it difficult for you to shift away from politics to an agency that is apolitical?
No, I retired from politics. I think today’s political landscape is wrought with potholes in the municipal context and turbulence.
Let’s build these spaces where we can come together and talk. I think we’re in a unique time, but I also think we’re in a time where people are coming around to and internalizing the importance of public space.
I’m sitting here telling you all the wonderful things about public space, and sometimes those don’t line up. And so I think the biggest lesson is flexibility and maintaining the ability to try things. That’s something that is scary. So what can people expect in the next year?
We’re very interested in trying lots of events. We’ve tried some events that were less successful, from a promotional side, and we’ve had some events that were an incredible success. Our Day of the Dead festival saw over 200,000 people through the neighbourhood that weekend. We’ve got to find the events that work and continue to bring good numbers of people down, and then continue to find spaces where we can create risk-free environments for groups to try an event at low cost. Not everybody is going to pick up an idea right away.
We’ve got to slowly bring those things along, and I think we got to remind ourselves it’s a marathon and not a sprint and find the right pace. It’s about slowing it down, professionalizing and doing the right things by sort of public space.
