INNER CITY SHOPPING

Now that the Christmas 2004 shopping season is ended, officials of the Port-of-Spain and San Fernando Corporations will need to get together with inner city merchants to formulate strategies on how to win back the shoppers to the respective downtown shopping areas. Merchants in both cities have been losing business for the past two decades to suburban and outlying malls which allow for easier parking and because of their sizes virtually unhurried shopping. For example, Port-of- Spain residents, who do not wish to lose shopping time through being needlessly bogged down in traffic, as well as being limited in their choice of stores because of the lack of available nearby parking space and/or the location of car parks have been finding it more convenient to head out to the Long Circular Mall, West Mall, Grand Bazaar and other shopping malls.

San Fernando shoppers have headed out to the Gulf City Mall, and, increasingly, mobile residents of both cities have been exercising the option of going to Chaguanas, the country’s fastest growing town. The innovative High Street Pedestrian Mall, introduced by San Fernando Mayor, Ian Atherly, during the Christmas Season, while it may have allowed for relatively hassle free shopping, nonetheless the jury is still out on whether it may have been a contributory factor to a reported decline in sales. Mayor Atherly’s was a bold initiative which, oddly enough, received criticism from the San Fernando Business Association in an almost knee jerk reaction. A week ago, however, when a team from the Association, led by Vice President, Dave Tikasingh, met with Mayor Atherly and other stakeholders, for example the Inner-City Taxi Association, the North-South Taxi Association and the Police, Tikasingh had noted that the drop in sales, may or may not have been attributable to the Mall. He added that several businessmen had experienced a 25 to 30 per cent fall off in sales during the Christmas Season as such.

But whether the presence of the Mall had negatively impacted on sales or not it had been a tactical error for the Mayor and the San Fernando City Corporation to have introduced the Pedestrian Mall without full discussions being held with and allowing for a needed input from the City’s business community. In Port-of-Spain, Mayor Murchison Brown had tents placed in Woodford Square to create, as had been done in previous years, a pedestrian mall for shoppers. Ironically, the mall with its ample and hassle free access, triggered complaints not from Frederick Street merchants but from mall vendors who were protesting low patronage. The lesson to be gained from both experiences, one entirely new and the other a regular annual feature, was that neither appeared to have been effectively marketed. In Port of Spain, it clearly had not been enough for the Corporation to have been content that the mall had been a Christmas Season feature at Woodford Square for several years, since all business ventures thrive on marketing. Marketing of the Woodford Square Christmas Mall should have begun several weeks before it was opened. In turn, the San Fernando Corporation should have attempted to sell the idea of a Pedestrian Mall to the business community, the burgesses of San Fernando and other stakeholders months ago.

A principal factor that both the Port-of-Spain and San Fernando Corporations need to take into account is that the country’s population is increasingly mobile and people’s shopping is no longer limited to where and/or close to where they live. Trinidad and Tobago’s rapidly expanding vehicle population is equivalent to one vehicle for every four persons. More people have the ability to exercise choices today than, say 20 or 30 years ago, as to where they will shop, eat or go for entertainment. This explains why persons are shopping at suburban malls or at malls several miles from where they live, and why malls are increasingly popular. They are exercising these choices as a result of the convenience and comfort they represent. For the Corporations and indeed businesses to be successful in wooing them back to inner city shopping will need careful planning and equally careful marketing of the results of this planning.      

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"INNER CITY SHOPPING"

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