Business View Civil and Municipal | March 2021

178 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL MARCH 2021 up to 25 percent of their purchase back in Downtown Truro Dollars, up to a maximum of $100. It helped the businesses but also had the effect of making it more desirable to shop in local stores. Our results show it incentivised about $20,000 worth of local spending.” Another project was the implementation of a local delivery service. During the spring of 2020, when COVID was at its worst, the town offered free delivery from local businesses. It covered all of Colchester County, as well as East Hants and Pictou Counties. Between the end of March to mid- June, over 1000 packages were delivered, and that resulted in local spending of over $50,000. Because of the success of the program, when the second wave hit Nova Scotia in the fall of 2021, the town thought it was crucial to offer a similar program to incentivize shopping locally during the December holiday season. Grant shares, “We widened our partnership on Phase 2 and had our local regional enterprise network, the Truro Colchester Partnership for Economic Prosperity, and the County of Colchester come on as partners with us. We also expanded Phase 2 into the Halifax market. It ran for eight weeks and we delivered over 600 packages – this resulted in another $45,000 in local spending. All of those programs were well received, and it made a difference for our local businesses. We even saw a number of new businesses open during the pandemic.” Truro did a lot of work over the last decade to develop their downtown core, making it more of a hub of activity and a gathering place for cultural events and concerts, with a revitalized library and farmers’ market anchoring the town. The second step has been to move away from single-family housing and focus efforts on multi- unit living within the downtown core. This was a direction that had never been tried in the town and has paid off. “All of what we have invested in, from a revitalization perspective, has made a tremendous difference to the downtown area,” says Dolter, “Right now, we’ve got three major buildings that are under a development