Garrett Simmons

As Taber heads into the New Year, there are certainly many challenges on the horizon. First and foremost, however, should be Taber’s downtown core.
We’ve all heard it for years — downtown is on its last legs. The year that was 2011 certainly was not kind to our retail sector, as stores dropped like flies.
Bar Al Beef, The Candy Store and Color Your World were all casualties at the end of 2011, and now Penner’s is not long for this world simply adds to the misery.
What does this say about Taber? Are shoppers simply unwilling to see what Taber has available? Is there just no confidence remaining in our town’s ability to support retail business?
It would appear confidence is sorely lacking. To that point, in talking to Ron and Ilene Levagood late last year, as the couple was in the last days of the retirement sale at Color Your World, the frustration was palpable.
The couple was basically, for all intents and purposes, willing to give the business away. If memory serves me correctly, a mere $70,000 was all it was going to take for someone to walk away with the Color Your World name and the contents within the store. That was not an exorbitant amount, and yet no one was willing to step up and take on the risk.
Color Your World was a bit of an anomaly, in that it was not a purely retail outlet, of course, but provided installation services as well, something the Levagoods were quick to point out had solid growth potential in Taber, since many new residential developments are currently underway.
Still, no one was willing to save Color Your World — a strong indictment of the retail business sector in Taber, and its potential for any kind of growth and stability going forward.
Many retailers have found the going tough recently, and no one seems willing to stick it out downtown anymore. An examination of what was available, business wise, when I first came to this town in January, 2000, compared to now, is indeed startling.
Taber formerly had a sporting goods store, a jewelry store a bakery and downtown department stores like The Bargain Shop and SAAN. Women’s clothing stores have gone the way of the dodo, as has the travel agency and an electronics outlet. Restaurants have even had a tough go, as a handful have come and gone over the years.
Attempts have certainly been made over the years to kickstart downtown. I remember attending numerous downtown revitalization meetings, chaired by Mr. Levagood, which caused much discussion and in the end, little to no action.
Potential downtown themes were discussed, along with an overarching strategy to kickstart the retail core.
Plans were drafted, open houses were held and the public was asked for its input. Downtown businesses were also asked to fork some cash over for the renovations, which as it turned out, they were reluctant to do. Looking back, it was quite likely a missed opportunity.
Downtown revitalization, in the terms discussed years ago, is for all intents and purposes, dead. Sure, the town has completed a number of downtown intersection projects, which have certainly improved the aesthetics of those corners impacted, but that is where it ends.
Today, downtown seems to lack any type of focus or cohesion, and in the end, when you think about Taber’s downtown now, the only question which seems to be on your mind is, how long before THAT business is going to close.
In short, we have reached a crisis point. Businesses are dropping like flies, and it seems there is little we can do to stem the tide. A return to business revitalization talks would most surely result in very little, as there is now a much smaller retail contingent downtown to share any costs of a major makeover project.
Talk about an agricultural interpretive centre have stalled, as concerns about that project’s price tag have seemingly put that idea to rest. Retail development on Taber’s eastern edge near Wal-Mart has also come to a halt, as the once-touted second anchor tenant there has never materialized.
In short, Taber is in trouble from a retail perspective. For everything we have going for ourselves, that is one problem we seemingly are unable to solve at the moment. Taber thrives in terms of its oil and gas service industry, and agriculture. We can boast of an industrial base most communities of our size can only dream of. However, that has not translated into downtown success.
Many other towns our size struggle with the scourge of have a bigger centre right next door. Some have even thrived. The excuse the double-lane highway, and the lure of Lethbridge is simply too much to overcome, can only be used so much.
When it comes down to it, someone, or some group, is going to have to step up with a plan to save what is left of downtown Taber.
Confidence in our retail core is at an all-time low, and perhaps it is going to take an aggressive and imaginative entrepreneur, or group of entrepreneurs, to see there is opportunity here, and act on that opportunity.
The town, chamber of commerce, business community and other levels of government must all be part of the solution. We need to go back to the drawing board here and discover some real solutions. Time is not on our side. Parts of downtown already resemble a ghost town. How many more businesses can we afford to lose?