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Category: Featured Members

Posted on December 20, 2022December 20, 2022 in Downtown in the News, Featured Members, Uncategorised

Downtown Businesses come together to let it glow this Holiday Season

Brighter than ever, twinkling lights and lighted window displays illuminate downtown streets. This winter Downtown Businesses have been expressing their […]

Posted on November 30, 2022November 30, 2022 in BIA Member Communications, Business Announcements, Downtown in the News, Featured Members

New Downtown Business: Tandem Waves Collective

Tandem Waves Collective is a new Downtown Business that offers innovative & affordable group therapy, corporate wellness training, workshops and […]

Posted on September 16, 2022September 16, 2022 in Downtown in the News, Featured Members

Step Inside Downtown’s New Bottle Shop

St. Catharines has its very own dedicated Wine, Spirits, and Craft beer bottle shop – Archives Wine and Spirit Merchants […]

Posted on September 12, 2022September 12, 2022 in Featured Members

Future Black Female

Future Black Female (FBF) was founded in 2019 by Dr. Tapo Chimbganda to support and empower Black female youth embarking […]

Posted on May 18, 2022May 18, 2022 in Featured Members

Absolute Impact Marketing

Congratulations to Darryl Hanam of Absolute Impact Marketing for celebrating 13 years in business!! Darryl opened Absolute Impact Marketing, an […]

Posted on May 4, 2022May 5, 2022 in Business Announcements, Featured Members, Uncategorised

Alazzam Engineering Inc.

A warm downtown welcome to Alazzam Engineering Inc who are also celebrating 11 years in business this month! Owners Fouad Alazzam, […]

St. Catharines Downtown Association

Do More in the Core.

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In a forest, some trees provide shade for other species to thrive beneath the canopy – while others share nutrients in the soil so that diversity can thrive! Similar to these forest trees, the best way to create strength and resilience for a sustainable urban forest is through the establishment of formal partnerships.

To bring more harmony between the City wide greening efforts, a formal partnership could exist between the City of St. Catharines’ Green Committee and the SCDA’s own StreetScape & Sustainability Committee. This would establish a cooperative force to ensure that urban street trees are effectively managed and prioritized as important infrastructure for the Downtown core.

These partnerships can be extended to other groups that will improve our collective efforts to provide a sustainable urban forest for many years to come such as:

The City of St. Catharines
Niagara Region
Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority
Vineland Research & Innovation
Niagara College
Land Care Niagara
Trout Unlimited
Bring Back the Brookies
ncStewards
Many more!

By 2041, Downtown St. Catharines will look at lot different than it does today with an estimated 30% increase in population density. This level of development will have significant implications for the urban forest (UF) in the BIA. Currently, tree planning and maintenance is generally divided between two departments: Community, Recreation & Culture Services and Municipal Works.

These two departments are responsible for the entire UF in the City of St. Catharines which is an incredible amount of responsibility. An Urban Forest Manager would amplify and assist the work being done already, allowing these two departments to have greater capacity for interdepartmental collaboration and external participation from the public.

This Urban Forest Manager can provide many services for the City, to ensure these urban forests are properly valued and maintained into the future.

We all love trees for their natural radiance: they provide us with shade, greenery, and a sense of community. For many of us, trees are the reference for where we call home. Like many other animals, we use trees to keep us cool, to get around and to keep us safe. Since trees are so important, it can be difficult to truly capture the infrastructural importance of trees for our communities and the environment.

This is where our first step comes into play. By reclassifying USTs, we will help establish these trees as valuable, sustainable, and significant assets for the City. The City of St. Catharines Asset Management department works to provide longevity for their assets, guide decisions, provide guidance for maintenance and rehabilitation, analyze costs/benefits, and strategically integrate this infrastructure with community objectives.

“Natural asset management is a meaningful way for municipalities to respond to the impacts of climate change.”

Cassandra Pacey, Asset Manager, City of Waterloo (August 2022)

By reclassifying trees as assets, particularly with an emphasis on Climate Change adaptation, the City of St. Catharines will ensure that the services trees provide us are justly appraised and appreciated, so that proper management of these assets can create a sustainable investment into the future.

When a tree falls in the city, does it make a sound? Under the direction of the Urban Forest Manager & with the proper by-laws in place, every urban forest tree will be provided with various protections to prevent unmonitored losses:

Long-term maintenance
Developer accountability for equal-value replacements
Funds or subsidies for private property owners for replacing trees
Tree inspections and assessments
Investigations on maintenance and replacement strategies

Many municipalities have varying urban forest management by-laws that help protect their urban canopy. By exploring these protections, the City of St. Catharines can help protect our urban forest investments and reduce costly retroactive efforts to replace lost value.

While the law can help protect the existing tree population, the City of St. Catharines can invest in effective planning to ensure that new trees are provided with the proper ingredients to thrive and grow into maturity.

Each tree will require its own unique considerations and should be appraised by a professional. The primary considerations include:

LOCATION: Determining available sites within the Downtown core for new trees.

SPECIES SELECTION: Selecting hardy species that can survive within the conditions of an urban environment, while ensuring that the diversity of the urban forest remains high (this creates resilience against disease and climate change).

SITE PREPARATIONS: Preparing the site is arguably the most important step to ensuring longevity in a tree population; if a tree doesn’t have the opportunity to establish stability within its environment, it will not likely reach its full potential for size and age. There are multiple factors to consider:

Tree Species
Canopy potential
Stature
Hardiness (i.e. resilience to drought, weather conditions, sunlight, etc)
Leaf Size (shade capacity)
Soil Conditions (i.e. compaction, nutrient accessibility, moisture availability, etc.)

Is the soil too compacted for a sapling to establish itself? Perhaps a soil cell system and potential mycorrhizal amendments will do the trick! Is the site not suitable for in-ground tree planting? Perhaps a large, mobile tree planter would be more suitable.

There are a lot of creative ways to integrate green technology to ensure a flourishing urban canopy!

Imagine grabbing your bike and riding along the Twelve Mile Creek to your favourite restaurant downtown!

Once trees are established as natural assets and partnerships are created, these urban trees can be protected through the implementation of municipal by-laws. These efforts will provide urban trees with the proper resources to grow into mature infrastructure under the guidance of an urban forest manager.

From there, we can expand the St. Catharines Downtown BIA, to include the Twelve Mile Creek. Expanding the BIA boundary to include Twelve Mile creek will help the SCDA to activate and monitor this area for its potential as a tourist asset. With this inclusion, the SCDA can also advocate for improved multi-modal transportation routes and monitor their value for the downtown BIA.

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