Downtown Halifax Business Commission wants ideas for Granville Mall

The Downtown Halifax Business Commission is planning to build on what it calls the success of the Argyle Street project in an effort to bring more people to downtown Halifax this winter.
 
The focus is now on Granville Mall — a pedestrian shopping area with Italianate-style historic facades dating back to the 1800s. 

The mall features pubs, bars, restaurants, art galleries and boutique stores.

It is also the current home of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design.
   
"We're definitely looking at Granville Mall as another wonderful pedestrian-centric area in the downtown," said Brenden Sommerhalder, the commission's director of communications and marketing.

Welcoming your ideas

Sommerhalder said the feedback on the Argyle Street project — where the street was painted with an argyle pattern and closed at times to vehicle traffic — has been "almost unanimously positive."

"They reported [an] increase in foot traffic, increase in revenue; things that they attribute to the project and the attention people were paying to Argyle Street during the summer," he said.

Sommerhalder said the street attracted people of all ages.

"People were going to Argyle Street businesses for the first time in years, if ever; maybe for the first time with their children," he said. "We've never seen so many strollers downtown in one spot!"

Sommerhalder said the commission would like to partner with businesses in the area and do something similar to what was done on Argyle Street.

"That is [to] really focus on it as a public art piece and as a place for people to come together and mingle and experience community in the downtown."

Sommerhalder says the commission hasn't yet decided what it will do with Granville Mall but it is open to suggestions from the public  

"Let your imaginations soar," he said. "Share your ideas with us and who knows where that will go?"