How tough is it on those people who are part of your team when they're out there on the street?

Yeah.

I'm going to give you one statistic that I think might answer that, but then I'll elaborate.

So, last year, my team conducted 3,253 welfare checks.

Now, that is not just going up to someone and saying, hey, how are you? Are you doing okay? That's when we have to check to make sure that somebody on our street is alive, that they're breathing.

3,253 times.

So there is, of course, a person who is struggling.

I'm going to start with you again.

Did it? So did you hear that from them?

The way people look at Granville Street has changed, and that includes the businesses.

Um, the narrative changed.

Very positive.

It became less defensive and more forward-thinking.

It became like, "Okay, this could work.

Hey, can you help us implement this?" Or, "Can we do this activation?" And in years past, it's been difficult to, to do that because the needs of the street are so urgent and acute that we were focused almost entirely on what needed to change, like, what wasn't working, and this gave us the opportunity to talk about what was working, and what would bring people to the street, and ultimately, what did bring people to the street.

What are you hearing from businesses about what you would, what they would like to see this election campaign focus on?

Right.

Right? It ...

I think it's going to be that local vibe that we expected for, for FIFA at first.

So you can expect a lot more family-friendly programming, a lot more activations taking place during the day and leading into the evening.

You can expect, um, more arts, more culture, more, um, live music.

With FIFA, we had a lot of restrictions.

Like, we couldn't have, um, uh, we couldn't have stages.

Because that ha- hasn't always been the case, right? And when I had talked to you before about this, I was surprised that there's this idea that sometimes the businesses will not support closing off a street to traffic.

You know? Like, there has to be sort of something that encourages people to hang around, and pop into this restaurant, and go to this bar, and then just stay and enjoy the atmosphere.

Yeah.

That's exactly what we're seeing.

And, um, we started [laughs] uh, two and a half weeks ago with a really beautiful plan that had a different theme for every block.

Uh, but as things do tend to happen in large scale events, we had to pivot and we had to make some adjustments.

So it didn't flow quite as, uh, succinctly or as smoothly as we had intended, uh, you know, with every block having its own experience, but it is working and people are coming down and they're exploring Granville Street and they're discovering restaurants and, uh, bars and retail establishments.

And it's not just Granville Street either.

Like, is it a full-time pedestrian zone ideally? Or, or do you think maybe something part-time during the summer would be better?

Why should they come downtown? I would say come downtown.

You don't have to have a ticket.

You don't have to make reservations for Granville Street anyway.

Come downtown.

Enjoy five blocks of the street being closed.

We have 28 extended patios.

It's a great opportunity for locals to come together, enjoy Granville Street, maybe be reintroduced to it, and just soak in the energy together.

Okay, and are there things that people need to know about the game days? Do you want to go over some of that as well, about where to go, where not to go? Well,

I won't make you do the whole thing

[laughs] Uh, it's designed really around, uh, welcoming locals into downtown during FIFA.

Um, we've talked about the Granville Pedestrian Zone.

It will highlight that.

It will highlight what's happening in and around our district.

There'll be an interactive map.

You can just click on it.

Yeah, what kind of impact do they have?