Upper Craigs businesses have banded together to keep doors open amidst roadworks that are scheduled to last until July.
The roadworks, that have been blocking off parking and pedestrian paths for the past several weeks, have left some businesses like Indian restaurant Kahani struggling.
Manager Debashis Pal notes that it has “impacted business quite a lot” and is deterring patrons who don’t want the headache of dealing with parking on the street.
Local cafe and bookstore, the Book Nook, wanted to find a way to keep people coming to the street even with construction underway.
The cafe’s creative solution has been to post images alongside heartfelt captions of their fellow independent businesses.
With their 5000 followers on Instagram, they hope to promote their neighbours and send a clear message of business as usual.
On the move co-owner Jasmine Forsyth says: “I don’t think people quite realise how many independent and specialist businesses are down here. So, that’s why we wanted to use our social media following to bring awareness to that.”
She expands by saying that: “No independent business exists in a vacuum. It’s not going to work if you just have one or two really good independent businesses. For the city centre to be good, you need to have a lot of independent businesses. So, I think bigging up any other business is a good thing.”
The roadworks form part of Stirling Council’s ‘Walk, Cycle, Live’ initiative that aims to create new cycle lanes and redo pavements throughout the high street.
On the initiative Forsyth says: “The issue is that we don’t have good infrastructure in this country for people to use things like bikes. So, overall, I think it is a good thing because if you create cycle-friendly cities, people are more inclined to cycle rather than drive.”
James Leask, owner of vegan café Nooch, notes that the post-Christmas lull makes it difficult to tell what the impact has been, but that he feels positive about the end goal of the construction.
Since being posted, Nooch has seen an increase of a few hundred followers and Leask says: “The community spirit of the street is great, and I think over the next six months or however long it’s going to take, whatever we can do to come together to kind of mitigate any factors would be great.”
Featured Image Credit: The Book Nook
South African student journalist in my second year of doing my Bachelor of Arts with Honours in Journalism Studies.
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