The Downtown Drumheller Merchants Committee has ceased to exist as an organization.
Membership voted on a motion to disband Downtown Drumheller at a lunchtime meeting on Tuesday. About 10 members of the more than 30 member strong organization were unanimous in their decision.
“We have no participation at all, that is the main reason,” said John Shoff member of the now defunct Downtown Drumheller Merchants Committee. “This topic came up at a last meeting in June, and I brought the motion to the floor due to participation and loss of focus.”
They gave the membership 30 days notice to make sure they understood the motion would be coming this month. Shoff says they were looking for a strong showing of support if they were to remain an entity, but it did not materialize.
“The executive went in person to a number of businesses who are members and explained that at the meeting in September, there is a motion on the floor to dissolve the committee,” he said, adding there were reports from the executive that many pledged to be there, but at the meeting it was the regular few who attend that voted.
Downtown Drumheller was formed as an ad hoc group about a half dozen years ago to promote downtown as an entity, looking at ideas to increase traffic, beautify, work on cooperative and cross promotion and host events in the core. It became a committee of the Drumheller and District Chamber of Commerce.
In the end Shoff felt it was the right decision to disband. For the last few years some of the original tenants had fallen by the wayside and it mainly served as a committee to plan events.
“Originally the committee was formed to promote downtown Drumheller and it evolved into an events committee, which is good and bad, but it has lost its vision… Yes events are part of that, but there is also networking all the businesses in downtown, cross marketing and working together for the good of the whole downtown, and that just doesn’t happen,” said Shoff.
“Realistically… the events will not go away if someone wants to do them, like the Halloween trick or treat, we can group together and do it. It is just a message to businesses that ‘if you want to be involved, be involved, don’t just pay your $100 and expect everything to be done,’” said Shoff.
He said the next step, moving forward, is for membership to look at other groups that exist that they may be able to partner with.
“We have three or four groups that are basically doing the same thing… it’s all hypothetical, but why have a whole bunch of groups doing the exact same thing instead of one with a bunch of people and a big pool of money that we can really do bigger stuff with,” said Shoff.