The Downtown North Battleford organization has unveiled a new art display on 101st Street in a bid to inject new life into the city's core.
The venue for the display is 1132 - 101st St., a building that used to be occupied by Speer's Flooring.
Rather than have an empty storefront sit there with a for sale sign on it, Darren Olson saw an opportunity for an art display to occupy the building.
The display consists of photos from Stuart Kasdorf and Doug Rarog. It is from a digital photographic display entitled Exploring North Battleford at 100 that debuted at the Canada Day Centennial celebrations. It also was displayed at the Chapel Gallery in an exhibition there.
Both Kasdorf and Rarog were friends of Olson who had suggested the project to them. He came up with the idea to display their photos downtown as a way to help the newly-established business improvement district.
"The basic premise of the idea was to see if any of the available space in the downtown core could be repurposed to display some photography from the photo expo that Stuart Kasdorf and Doug Rarog have developed about the community of North Battleford," Olson said.
He contacted local realtor Wayne Hoffman, whose sign was in the window. Olson said he presented the idea to him, and within a matter of minutes Hoffman had contacted the building owner who approved the idea.
"The building is still for sale. The best case scenario, we have to pull everything out of here and put new owners in the building," said Olson.
That's "not a bad problem to have. But in the interim we're using the window space to be able to display photos of the community, to add a little interest in our downtown core, to redeploy a lovely empty building and maybe attract a little more interest in what others may be able to do in the downtown core."
All this took Olson a little bit of time and energy and virtually no cost. "Just Windex," he said.
The plans is ultimately for the pictures to be put on display at the Western Development Museum. Olson held out the possibility that another photographer or artist might use the downtown space after that.
There's also the prospect the art display might add interest in the property on 101st Street and attract a new owner to move in.
Downtown North Battleford Executive Director Lisa McEachern said she and the rest of the board were "quite interested in occupying vacant space with something that's a bit more eye-catching."
She said they were certainly interested in filling up empty spaces with similar art or photographs.
As well, McEachern noted some of the other activities of the BID right now. Their clean team is now active, she said, doing projects to improve the cleanliness in the area.
A few Christmas decorating ideas will be incorporated downtown, and more events are planned as well.
McEachern said Sept. 28 has been set as the date for a fall festival, which will feature children's activities, a show-and-shine car show and a market square downtown.
