To try to break a years-long logjam over whether to designate a six-block stretch of Bank Street as Ottawa’s “gay village,” Somerset Councillor Diane Holmes plans to survey nearby residents to find out what they think.
The idea has been discussed and studied for years, given the concentration of gay bars, bookstores and sex shops on Bank between Nepean and James streets, but much of the debate has been driven by local merchants and the Bank Street Promenade Business Improvement Area, which decided to forgo any official designation or branding. Business owners might fly rainbow flags and try to attract gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered shoppers however they want, but that’s the extent of it.
That decision came after surveys of merchants showing views as varied as three-quarters support and three-quarters opposition to a gay-village designation, depending on whether the surveyors asked staff or owners.
But as important as the Bank Street merchants are, Holmes said Tuesday, they don’t own the street.
“The BIA’s an important player … but this is a public street,” Holmes said. People live in the district and the city has lately pumped millions of dollars into renewing the road itself and the street scene.
“There’s been a big public investment,” she says.
So next week, Holmes is sending a survey to addresses within a block of Bank and along the strip, asking for people’s views. If a majority are in favour of calling that area Ottawa’s gay village, Holmes said she’ll push for six street signs to be added, in the fashion of those marking Chinatown and Little Italy, possibly as soon as November.
“It’s already in both municipal and provincial tourism materials, saying Bank is a gay-friendly street,” Holmes said. She also anticipates such a designation would be good for business, since “there’s good disposable income from the GLBT community.”
The Citizen’s call to Bank Street BIA director Gerry LePage was not immediately returned. The group has a published policy calling for “bottom-up” branding that says: “Bottom-up branding requires a serious commitment on behalf of a subculture or group that wishes to brand an area. In fact, the exercise is essentially a self-directed effort by the subculture to facilitate branding and is not therefore a function of the BIA or other external associations or organizations to facilitate.”
Jordan Charbonneau, vice-president of the Centretown Citizens Community Association, said the group has no formal position on the designation yet, but is in favour of the consultation, as it is any time City Hall asks what residents think.
“If the support is there, it’ll be clear what the right thing to do is,” he said. To judge by the turnout at gay-pride events last weekend, Charbonneau said, there seems to be plenty of support in the community at large, but the survey will tell for sure.
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