2 YEARS LATER: She took over as Downtown London boss. Then COVID hit
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Barbara Maly started her job as executive director of Downtown London on Feb. 24, 2020. Two and a half weeks later, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic.
She says the biggest lesson she’s learned since has been how to think like a jazz musician.
“I think that’s what we’ve all had to do these last two years: Improvise,” Maly said, which goes against her nature: “I had all these plans in place. I’m a planner.”
Downtown London is the business improvement area (BIA) that includes enterprises such as Milos’ Craft Beer Emporium, David E. White Clothier and the Jonathon-Bancroft-Snell Gallery among its more than 1,400 members. It is the biggest BIA in the province, and one of the largest in Canada.
Also a member is Heroes, the venerable comic store on Dundas Street.
“She got thrown into the job at the worst possible time,” owner Brahm Wiseman said of Maly, who praised Downtown London for their response pandemic response. “They were really good during the worst of it, during the initial shutdown.”
Maly and her crew were in daily contact with Heroes during the days when COVID truly was novel and people were trying to find out what the new normal entailed, Wiseman says.
“No matter what life throws at you, there’s a way out,” Maly said about the lessons COVID taught her. “Sometimes there’s not a straight path forward, it meanders. I don’t have to have everything exactly planned out.”
Maly does not dispute the contention the past two years have been among the most challenging for London’s core.
“I think there’s been a number of things cascading on top of the other, with COVID and construction,” she said, as well as the issues of homelessness and crime, and now the affordability crisis, which she points out is not solely a London problem.
But Maly also points to the fact that 35 new businesses opened in the downtown last year. “We also had six businesses last year that created a second location outside of the downtown. And four more that expanded (their existing footprint),” she said.
“One thing that has really impressed me is just the resilience of downtown and our businesses,” she said, adding she doesn’t discount the challenges her members have faced at a time when many stores shifted to a virtual business model and when eating inside restaurants wasn’t allowed.
“I think, out of all our businesses, our small businesses have had enough,” Maly said.
“When we were closed, we adapted,” Wiseman said of his own operation, which he says will remain “local-based” despite the growth of online shopping.
“We’ve had supply-chain issues, distribution changes, a huge increase in the cost of goods. I guess it goes back to community . . . As long as you support your community, they will support you,” he said.
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