What We Heard: Downtown Pedestrian Mall Public Engagement

Public engagement to collect feedback from businesses, the public and other key stakeholder groups about the Downtown Pedestrian mall ran from Sept. 7 to Oct. 11. Engagement included on-street interviews, focus groups with business and stakeholder organizations, a public survey, a business survey, feedback collected through Access St. John’s (311), emails, and an online discussion page at EngageStJohns.ca.

During the process there were 1,300 visitors to the engage website, 552 of whom were actively engaged; 42 contributed to the ideas tool, and 537 responded to the quick poll. There were 927 responses to the public survey online, and 73 intercept surveys in the mall during operation. Thirty-seven surveys were completed by the business community, with Downtown St. John’s, George Street Association and 12 businesses participating in focus groups. The City’s Inclusion Advisory Committee was also consulted.

Public satisfaction with the pedestrian mall experience, according to the survey results, is an average of 4 out of 5, with the business community average of 3.3 out of 5. Although the business numbers differ depending on location of business.

Highlights of ‘What We Heard’ include:

• Generally, there is a view that the Downtown Pedestrian Mall is well liked and used by the public; this perspective differed, depending on which section of the mall was discussed.
• Businesses on Duckworth St. and users of the mall felt the Duckworth St. addition did not add significantly to the mall and many business owners felt it negatively impacted their business.
• While the animation/entertainment added for 2021 was seen as a positive addition, some noted it was spotty and not always well promoted.
• Many people and businesses suggested increasing the timelines of the mall or adding a winter/holiday mall.
• While improvements in accessibility were noted for 2021, there were still challenges and suggestions for future improvements for planning, wayfinding, accessibility and GoBus. 

Read the full ‘What we Heard’ document online.

Information gathered through public engagement along with technical assessments and feedback from the Special Events Regulatory Committee will be used to make recommendations to Council for future pedestrian mall events.