While businesses in Yaletown and the downtown core shattered February sales records, the West End was ghostly quiet, prompting sharp criticism amongst members of the West End Business Improvement Association.

For Fujon Hair salon on Denman, the Olympics marked the worst month of sales in nine years. Jay Hur, owner of Teresa’s Cafe, said his business was down 20%. Even Kingyo Izakaya, normally packed on Friday and Saturday nights, saw sales slow: “Our numbers were down 5%. The West End was dead,” said owner Minoru Tamaru.

Kingyo’s business has returned, but for some the effects of a quiet February linger on: “We spent so much- hiring staff, training them, stocking product according to summer inventories,” explained Jimmy Brar, owner of Characters on Davie Street.

The restaurant, in its eleventh year, saw this February down 70% over the last.

“Davie Street had nothing- no flowers, no lights. There should have been something happening in this area,” Brar said.

Tom Chambers, general manager at True Confections, echoed similar sentiments: “We were hoping that the business association would do a bit more.”

Four days into the games, Lyn Hellyar, Executive Director of the West End Business Improvement Association, told us she had received no feedback from her members, and wouldn’t be talking to them until she was back in town, the first week of March. A sign on the BIA door later confirmed she was away on vacation.

But not all the associations closed up shop:

“We’ve been sprinting a marathon for 15 days now — that’s the only way I can describe it,” said Annette O’Shea, Executive Director at the Yaletown BIA.

According to O’Shea, Yaletown started talking Olympic strategy four years ago, and adjusted their budget for the last two.

“It’s been a lot of fun,” she said, “and really successful for small business. We have 900 members, 275 of which are ground floor- ground floor of course has had the greatest impact- but across the board all of them have had the best February ever. In fact, within the first four days of the games, they had already beaten their Feb ’09, and it’s just gotten better and better.”

Yaletown was undoubtedly blessed — with the construction of the Canada Line, its proximity to the major venues, and its hosting of the LiveCity site, the neighbourhood seemed destined to benefit from the games — but the BIA deserves some credit as well.

‘Made in Vancouver’ was a 15-day street festival with 3 sound stages, a fashion stage, buskers, acrobats and jazz, put on by the BIA and ‘I Heart Van Art’. The festival featured some 3,000 hours of live entertainment performed by artists who worked for nothing more than a place to showcase their talents.

“For the last two years our BIA said, ‘let’s focus everything we can on getting the most out of this Olympic opportunity’,” said O’Shea.

When the city said it would cancel the LiveCity Yaletown site, O’Shea fought for its survival. “We lobbied very hard to ensure LiveCity happened, and that the city was aware that it was welcomed and supported here, and that we would do what we could to help it.”

“We wouldn’t have been very successful if it hadn’t been for the David Lam site,” she added.

The Yaletown BIA, like its West End counterpart, is funded by local businesses, who pay through a city-imposed levy on property taxes. The budgets are put to vote at an Annual General Meeting, and require final approval by city council.

Yaletown, with its base of around 900 members, received $531,003.13 in tax levies from the city for 2009/10.

The West End BIA received $600,000.01 from around 800 members- the second highest grant in Vancouver.

Originally founded as the Davie Village BIA, then spanning only three blocks, the association expanded its boundaries to include Davie Street West, Denman Street, and a portion of Robson. After the required notifications and public hearings, the expansion was approved by council for April 1st, 2007, and the grant jumped from $160,000 to $500,000.

The BIA expansion process requires that 33.3% of affected merchants or property owners submit written objection if an expansion is to be denied. Votes not cast are assumed to be in favour- or least not openly opposed.

According to City BIA Program Coordinator, Peter Vaisbord, no expansion request in Vancouver has ever been denied. The West End was close though; including letters of objection received after deadline, holders of 29.9% of the assessed land value opposed its creation. 35 individual merchants (9.2% of the total) also wrote in to protest.

Three years later and the association has yet to gain a firm foothold with its new members, and struggles to reach the 15 votes required for quorum at its AGM.

In a March 10th interview, Lyn Hellyar identified awareness amongst her members as a key issue: “A lot of merchants don’t even know they’re a member, which to me is almost incredible, because if you’re running a business and you’re paying money out towards something, you’d think you’d want to know what it was going to do.”

Part of the disconnect occurs in the way the city collects the levy, which is itemized on the property tax to the landlord, but may never be shown to the tenant, who ultimately bears the cost.

Aftab Ali Khan, owner of Ciao Bella and La Bistro de Paris, has hosted BIA meetings in the past, but said he had no idea he was paying into it. Like many others in the West End, he wishes the BIA did more for the Olympics. “Nothing happened. It was very disappointing. It was like a big party and we were not invited.”

Khan has never voted at any of the West End BIA’s general meetings, and is beginning to think he needs to participate. “I should be a part of it,” he said, “it would be much better.”

“Perhaps it’s my fault too,” he added.

Lynn Hellyar speaks frankly about the challenges in her catchment: “I could have a wonderful board because I have all kinds of contacts downtown. I’ve got people that would say yes to come sit on my board, but I can’t ask them because you have to be either a property owner or a merchant within the boundary [...] My pool isn’t as good as what his [Charles Gauthier, Executive Director of the Downtown BIA] is.”

As for the Olympics, Hellyar said the BIA’s options were limited: “We couldn’t have had a live site — that was VANOC mandated — but maybe we could have had one of the pavilions. In terms of having a big screen TV [...] even if we had wanted to have one and could get permission, we don’t have that kind of budget.”

The West End BIA focused instead on an awareness campaign, centered around their hand-delivered newsletter: “I realized that a lot of our merchants were just oblivious to the Olympics. The Olympics were happening ‘there’, not ‘here’. And so they weren’t thinking in terms of, okay, we should decorate for this, we should do promotions- there’s things that we should do. So we started to try and tell them about the things that they could do.”

Sean McCann, proprietor of Fun-O-Rama on Denman, fished the latest newsletter from the trash beneath his desk. “I have no idea what they do aside from put up banners and pay those guys who walk around in the red clown suits,” he said, referring to the Downtown Ambassadors program, funded in part by the West End BIA.

“We’ve got a printer right across the street and they get their printing done outside of the West End,” he said, holding the newsletter.

McCann said that given the opportunity he would vote the BIA out, but like the vast majority of business owners in the area, he doesn’t attend the annual general meetings.

While the future of the embattled association may be uncertain, one thing is not: in a democracy, you must speak for your voice to be heard.