Critics say the Hastings North Business Improvement Association (HNBIA) should not have tried to rebrand the East Hastings strip between Commercial Drive and Renfrew Street as the city’s new East Village.
The 12-block strip has plenty of restaurants and retailers who, the HNBIA noted in a press release, wanted the area to get some “love and respect from residents and visitors.”
HNBIA executive director Patricia Barnes said, “There’s certainly a stigma with saying you’re on East Hastings. People sometimes react to East Vancouver without realizing that there’s this eclectic bunch of neighbourhoods.”
But residents such as web designer, bicycle courier and social media blogger Greg Andrews took offence at that.
“It’s like saying this area isn’t good enough as it is,” he told Business in Vancouver. “We have to use a name made up by a marketing agency for people to like it.”
Andrews also does not like the way the HNBIA appropriated the name of a well-known neighbourhood in New York City, and he believes there was little community consultation. Further, he thinks that the HNBIA was not alert enough to social media when it launched the neighbourhood’s new brand.
The HNBIA made and hung banners from lampposts in April.
“The BIA registered the website EastVillageVancouver.ca and is periodically updating it, but there’s another woman who registered VancouverEastVillage.ca, Twitter accounts and a Facebook page and then starts posting more than the BIA was doing,” said Andrews.
Andrews believes that the HNBIA’s failure to registering the VancouverEastVillage.ca domain may cause it to lose advertising revenue.
Barnes brushed off Andrews’ criticisms when she was contacted by BIV.
“When you embark on something that’s new and exciting, there will always be some critique out there,” she said.
She said that the HNBIA conducted a 12-month consultation process with its members and not the community at large because the BIA does not represent the community.
There are many neighbourhoods branded East Village in the world, not only the one in New York, she added.
“[The woman who owns the VancouverEastVillage.ca domain] is a resident who is very excited about the area and we’re happy that somebody is out there being positive,” Barnes said.
