Businesses share concerns about downtown Sudbury in chamber survey

Facing escalating crime and disorder, Greater Sudbury’s Chamber of Commerce demands urgent action from city hall and police. Alana Everson reports.

The Greater Sudbury Chamber of Commerce recently met with the mayor and chief of police to call for urgent action to deal with open drug use, public disorder, harassment, break and enters, theft, property damage and unsanitary conditions downtown.

It shared examples from businesses.

“The recommendations that we presented really fall under three themes. Increased police presence and transparency in how issues are being addressed downtown by the city (and) by the police,” said chamber CEO Marie Litalien.

“Cleanliness, which is very important, so increased service levels for garbage pick-up.”

Back-to-work policies

Litalien said the third area is back-to-work policies to increase foot traffic downtown.

The chamber is also conducting a survey of area businesses that runs until the end of October to find out about their first-hand experiences.

“We are hearing that increased costs for security, employee morale, the safety of their employees and their clients are becoming issues,” Litalien said.

“These issues are escalating and our survey results are showing that these instances occur daily in some cases.”

We talked to one long-time downtown business owner who didn’t want to be identified, but who shared their thoughts about the social disorder issues in the area.

“As a mom, it’s really hard to watch these kids having their issues,” the woman said.

“As a store owner, yes, I definitely feel the impact of what’s going on, whether it’s frightening customers, deterring them, that sort of thing. So pressure your government.”

The chamber said that so far, 86 per cent of respondents said they noticed an increase in crime, drug-related activity, safety and cleanliness issues in the past six months.