I’m a pusher of New Westminster. I think it’s the best city in the entire world and I love it with all of my heart. I was born here, I grew up here, we opened our brewery here, and my wife (also from New West) and I will be raising our son here.
However, when you own a business (especially a small one) cities can sometimes be difficult to deal with. Items pop up, whether it be road construction, increases in taxes, bylaws, etc., that make it harder on a business. I’ll be honest, I believe that most of these are necessary evils in order for any city to run and for New West to continue to become the city that we all want it to be. It doesn’t make it any less of a pain in the ass though.
Now one of my favourite things about our city is the communication that can be had by picking up the phone and instantly getting someone on the other line that can help you directly. I don’t think there are a lot of breweries in Vancouver that have this luxury. Maybe Brassneck, cause… well… they’re Brassneck.
Back to my story. Last night I received a phone call from our Tasting Room staff saying that our lounge was unusually quiet for a Thursday night. I drove down to the brewery to find that construction crews had blocked off access to Steel & Oak entirely. You could not get in. This construction (according to one of their staff) was going to continue until Sunday. I freaked. “You aren’t going to be able to access or business on our 3 busiest days of the week!?”
So like any small business owner would do I wrote an email to the City, at 9pm. By 10pm I had 3 responses about looking at ways to fix this issue. By 9am this morning (12 hours later) members of city staff had shown up at the brewery to rework the construction plan to suit our business needs as well as Pacific Breeze Winery behind us, who are hosting a wedding on Saturday if anyone is looking for endless wine and some Steel & Oak beer. Kidding, don’t crash it please 🙂
In 12 hours the City of New West had a solution for us.
Now I understand that these solutions are not always doable. I also understand that there are other businesses who are hurting in New West because of Front St. construction and the current traffic issues in our city. And those are real issues that the City should be working on to improve. But I also find that in our local papers and on social media city politicians and city staff are often painted in a negative light even though quite often they are doing things that I believe better our city.
So I thought I’d share a positive story for your Friday, on how cities and businesses can work together to make sure people are able to enjoy their well deserved beer after a hard work week.
– Jorden
