Most of Amanda Johal’s customers are looking for something “specifically different,” she says brightly. For 10 years, Johal has lived near 17th Ave. S.W. During that time, she also worked on the avenue at Snooper’s Clothing, now the site of Feisty, her very own women’s consignment business. She’s thrilled to have just opened her own business on the eclectic strip that’s won her heart. “I’ve always liked it here,” she says. “It was a big accomplishment for me.”

“Calgary’s full of malls,” she explains. “Seventeenth is where people who want to find anything funky, different, original or a little bit off the corporate beaten path go.”
Maureen Reid’s family set up Reid’s Stationary across the avenue from its current location in 1984, the same year the Uptown 17 Business Revitalization Zones (BRZ) was formed. What drew Reid’s family to 17th Ave. was its “cool” mix of businesses and the independence that came with owning their own location. Store access was not tied to mall hours, and they had their own dedicated parking.

Reid recalls that 17th Ave. didn’t have the look or feel of mainstream ’80s pop culture displayed elsewhere in the city — fluorescent pink and green awnings, clerks with massive back-combed hair and shoulder pads. “The flavour of it was more independent family businesses,” she says. This has changed, Reid acknowledges, but as an avenue vet, she’s pleased with its evolution.

Although national chains have established themselves, Reid says 17th Ave.’s independent businesses, like hers and Johal’s, continue to define it. She now suspects that new business owners are drawn here in part due to the area’s higher profile. As well, over the years its sleepiness and limited business hours have given way to busy evenings and weekends and lots of pedestrian traffic — this sharp increase in volume is inarguably good for business.

Where it’s also changed noticeably, she says, is in the number of restaurants and bars. “It’s created a whole different life of its own on the weekends and after six o’clock,” she says. “If you’ve ever been down here on a summer night, it’s quite fun. People drive up and down in their Lamborghinis and their motorcycles and people stroll the avenue. There’s lots of good energy.”

“The Red Mile obviously created a bit of tension,” she says of the avenue’s famed Flames-boosting, NHL-playoff street party alter ego. “But nothing bad ever really happened. You wouldn’t feel unsafe coming down here.”

This urban buzz also excites Johal, who believes other areas in Calgary lack this kind of vitality. She’s pleased with 17th Ave.’s evolution into a hopping, regional shopping and dining destination with a distinct nightlife. Having grown up shopping in Vancouver and Montreal, she understands the magnetic day-and-night vibe of big-city thoroughfares. “I so hope it becomes more and more like that,” she says.

 

- Ian Doig (FFWD Weekly)