Gastown retailers have a special Christmas wish for you.
Get MUD in your eye.
MUD stands for modern urban design. The malleable, albeit murky, moniker has been bestowed on a group representing 25 high-end furniture, fashion and other outlets in the historic downtown shopping and entertainment district near Vancouver's downtown waterfront.
Gastown shops are displaying the MUD logo in their windows to create a different, much cleaner kind of splash. The logo is designed to catch the busy shopper's eye during the holidays and stick in the memory bank the rest of the year.
"The message is that we have these great retail shops and these wonderful stores down here, offering something unique and special," says Leanore Sali, executive director of the Gastown Business Improvement Society, which is funding the bulk of the campaign.
Gastown, the first settlement in Vancouver, has long been known for cobblestone streets and sidewalks. But there was a time in the 1880s, when namesake "Gassy Jack" Deighton was setting up the area, that its streets were paved with nothing but mucky stuff.
The Our Name is MUD campaign is designed to shape a new image of Gastown and the 125 shops and restaurants there. Sali and other retailers say MUD reflects its transition from an area known mainly for restaurants and tourists into a haven for shopkeepers, artisans and professionals who specialize in modern urban design - and draw a young, cool, eclectic crowd.
"You can take something that's old and mould it into something that's very modern and very unique and very leading edge and very urban," says Sali.
The evolution mixes several design-related businesses that have been doing business in Gastown for decades with several newcomers.
"You have retailers that cater to a tourist, you have retailers that cater to a lower income, you have retailers that cater to people who are a little bit more affluent," says Sali. "That's what makes the neighbourhood exciting, this whole mix of people that live and work together."
Gastown's "renaissance" coincides with the rejuvenation of the area that is located near the poverty-stricken Downtown Eastside (DES). While Gastown buildings retain their historic faces, many of their insides are being modernized as they're converted into new condo, offices and stores.
MUD members aim to highlight Gastown's heritage but also illustrate its new form and functionality.
Advocates for the homeless and poor have criticized the city and province for allowing development instead of building more affordable housing.
Over the past two decades, several businesses around Gastown have closed or moved as shoppers preferred to trek over the tiles in suburban shopping malls and poverty on the DES increased.
Sali says being located near the DES is a challenge for retailers, but it's no greater challenge than the one faced in other neighbourhoods dealing with crime and poverty.
"I work with all kinds of (business improvement associations," says Sali. "All of us are faced with the same thing, and all of us are discussing and concerned about the same issues."
MUD's participating stores range from Bruce Eyewear, a relative newcomer that sells fashionable prescription eyeglasses; to Inform Interiors, one of the area's oldest outlets that specializes in European furniture, lighting and accessories; to Industrial Artifacts, which maintains a retail location while renting furniture designs to TV and film production companies; to Richard Kidd mens- wear, which has the slogan, "If you have to ask, you can't afford it."
Nada Vuksic, owner of Bruce Eyewear, says MUD will improve awareness of great fashion and furniture design stores in Gastown and show "there's a lot of really cool things happening" there.
"It's a little bit cheeky - and we like that - because there is a perception there that we are kind of a gritty place and a transitional place," says Vuksic. "It's taking that idea and putting a positive spin on it."
MUD, she says, ties in with the motto voiced by legendary real estate marketer Bob Rennie, who sold the condo units in the Woodward's department store redevelopment: Be bold or move to suburbia. "Clearly, I don't think we wallow in the mud down here, because I wouldn't have relocated my store here," says Vuksic.
"Gastown has promoted tourism, they've promoted the galleries, they have walkabouts that talk about the architecture and the history, so it was just time to present a different facet of the diversity of Gastown," she says.
"I don't know that we're trying to change the image. I think we're trying to expand the image," says Vuksic.
People can come down to Gastown and complete all of their Christmas shopping without ever leaving the area, she adds.
"When I had my store on Alberni (Street), I stepped over people sleeping in doorways, and I met more aggressive panhandlers than I ever have in Gastown. So, to somehow infer that Gastown, because it's adjacent to - or part of - the Downtown Eastside - is somehow worse than any other part of Vancouver, is not fair at all.
"It's misguided - if you come down here and see the community of professionals and artists and designers who make a living down here every day."
Harvey Reehal, owner of Inform Interiors and who helped come up with the concept, says MUD symbolizes a "raw form" that can be turned into something special. It is reminiscent of campaigns conducted in other shopping districts around the globe, such as London's SOHO.
Reehal's 47,000-sq.-ft. store, which is among the oldest in the area and specializes in European furniture and lighting, says he hopes MUD demonstrates Gastown is also a place where you can eat, drink and have fun.
"Gastown is a unique place to live and shop - simply put," says Reehal.
(Monte Stewart can be reached at monte@businessedge.ca)
