Dorchester Business Improvement District

Dorchester BID Project Director's latest report

Report - August 2011

Bike Racks - First few have been installed outside AutoBitz and others will follow soon. The penny farthing specials are expected to go in next week at either end of South Street.
Business Surveys - Survey results are available online at the DBID website when you log in.
Parking Update - Apart from the problems caused by the new development, the free on street and carpark parking over night and all day Sundays has been a success. At a time when many towns and cities are in the news at the moment looking to introduce charges for these times, we are lucky that for now at least this is not the case in Dorchester.
Shoppers Guide - In full swing, printed very soon
Website - A major milestone has been hit - 5000 unique visitors in one month! This is fantastic news as we are now really seeing a sustained level of traffic to the site which is growing as each quarter goes by. Any BID business not in the business directory is really missing out now so I will be doing another gentle reminder soon on this. A major reason for the continued rise in traffic are the excellent blogs and tweets that are being out ogther for us by Key multimedia. This I feel has now totally justified the board's decision last year NOT to cut the website spend as had been suggested. It is also drawing attention from various media sources - just yesterday I had a call from the Daily Telegraph that had seen the piece on Hardy and wanted to include his study in a piece they are doing, so I gave them the museum's contact details.
Voucher Buy Back Scheme - After last meeting's agreement to look at the 5 for one buy back idea on parking vouchers I am in the process of getting this organised. Eugene tells me that they will be placing their next order for tickets at the end of August so I have till then to do a minor re-design before we roll this out in September/October (whenever the existing stock of tickets run out). This deal will be on the new vouchers only and limited to a maximum amount of subsidy per business (my suggestion is that there is a max cut off anyway of what could be reclaimed (£100/£200pa).
Signage Around Town - We now have (after the efforts of Trevor & I who did a town-wide street survey of signage coming into town) some rapidly installed extra signage. This was only a first pass and we have had additional input from various sources including Goulds and Hardye Arcade businesses. This activity has taken a LOT of my time since the last board meeting. We are about to have some additional signage installed at the rear of Waitrose and the rear of Stead AND Simpson. This is to help visitors find the shops as they exit Wollaston fields car park.
Alistair's Taster Walks - Going well and mini questionnaires are being returned.
Markets - More a matter for the Chamber but we have received feedback about positioning having an adverse effect on businesses.
Live Music on a Saturday - We need information on timings to add to our events page.
Contact database - no progress
Durngate Street - The Archway project has been at least temporarily cancelled due to two issues. The Town Council Heritage Committee don't like the idea and the owners of Toni & Guy are reluctant to have anything attached to their building. On the plus side, Alistair's efforts to get some large photos produced and mounted on the side of The Works have come to fruition (with help from Kate Hebditch who helped source the photos from the museum and wrote the excellent words). Their work is being much admired.
One World Festival - Was a success I think - After a slow start, a lot more people came as the day went on and there was a very good community feel to the whole event (see local paper reports as well as our blogs etc). I was assisted on the day by Ann Snowden who kindly offered to keep me company on the day.
A Boards and signage - no progress
Park and Ride Update - Now open from Weymouth for those who live in Weymouth and work in Dorchester at an amazing £1.50 for all day parking and a round trip to Dorch! I calculate £700-£1200 saving to anyone currently using their car PLUS it frees up many spaces in town.

Report Archive

Report - October 2011

Project time lost: - There has not been as much progress on some projects because since the last meeting a lot of my (and Keir's and Lisa's time) has been taken up with other activities including dealing with non-payment by a few BID businesses, addressing various car parking issues and attending meetings to correct misinformation. However the benefit of all this is that we now have almost complete payment and there is a general feeling in town that being positive in the news about Dorchester is more likely to attract more visitors.
Parking updates - Since the last board meeting I had a request to go as a witness to the WDDC's scrutiny committee meeting as they are currently focusing on parking issues (The Chamber were represented too). I was invited to present a number of initiatives to help mitigate the current parking issues. These were a collection of ideas suggested by businesses in Dorchester.
The majority of the ideas were given cross party support by the councillors present and well received. Then, yesterday we had a follow up meeting where WDDC staff presented their responses to the suggestions (and reasons why some could not happen) but after a good bit of teamwork between councillors, the DBID and the Chamber several of these suggestions now look to be real possibilities in some form. Once we have confirmation and the Council exec have decided which ones can happen, we will be able to tell everyone about them.
Shoppers Guide - Printed and being distributed from today in London - Dorchester tomorrow! Copies will be available all over town including at the TIC. This will give great extra exposure for Dorchester in the run up to the Olympics and all next year. Update - many copies distributed at the successful Business Connections event, Dorford Centre, October 14th
Subsidised advertising: - We have provided assistance for BID businesses again this summer in the Echo and the ViewFrom publications as well as the shoppers guide. The new Autumn/Winter season edition of Resort magazine is about to hit the streets and we will be encouraging as many businesses as possible to join our co-operative section of this tourist magnet publication in the next edition which covers Spring/Summer 2012 - the run up to the Olympics!
Dorchester Cracker: - We will be doing our usual run of supporting advertising for the Cracker this year and promoting the later night shopping on Thursdays through December. You may have seen in this weeks View From a full page advert which is already giving people the reminder to keep the day free.
Social media workshop: - Ran 4th October for the 3rd time, still well attended and nice to see some new businesses there that have not so far been able to get to any of these events. We will be running another level II event probably on the 1st of November.
Website: - Traffic dropped off in September for the first time in many months. We hope this is a glitch and a bit of an end of summer thing (after a record number of individual site visitors in August it was always likely). The site has been kept fresh with regular updates and new blog stories.
Bike Racks: - All installed now and had positive feedback from several people. In fact, we have been approached by the Town Copuncil to see if they could have two in the Borough gardens. Although we are likely to be spent up on the cycle rack budget, I would like to propose that if we can find the budget we could offer to match fund 50/50 on this installation if they decide to go ahead - our cost would be £500.
Voucher buy back scheme: - As already mentioned, this is now going live but I have been holding off telling BID businesses about it because if WDDC rubber stamp the idea of adding their support to this then businesses will get £2 back for every 5 tokens collected rather than £1 for every 5. I expect that we will get a few new shops coming into the scheme as a result of this support. I am hoping to send something out before the end of next week but all tokens from October onwards will be redeemable.
Signage around town: - We now have the additional signage installed at the rear of Waitrose and the rear of Stead and Simpson. This is to help visitors find the shops from the newly short stay Wollaston fields car park and the remaining Charles Street car park. In addition to this, as a result of the requests made at the monthly meetings now taking place between DBID, Chamber, WDDC, Simons and Cowlin, we now have much better signage around the site including a massive new blue short stay parking banner on the wall outside Wollaston to help visitors identify and find it.
To further assist some of the most affected shops near the development site, DBID, Chamber and WDDC all contributed towards the costs of banners either end of the Hardye arcade, these are now also in place.
Alistair's Town Crier taster walks: - The taster walks that we and the Chamber have been sponsoring have now finished and we have collected 68 surveys representing 223 visitors to town who enjoyed the tours. I have the survey cards here if anyone would like to see the comments. The walks were generally very well received. We have randomly picked a winner of the £50 prize and she is a Mrs Smile from Bristol whom I am trying to contact.
Energy Audit: - Considering how everyone is trying to watch the pennies at the moment, the response to the free energy audits was quite low. As part of the BID ethos of trying to make the BID levy cost neutral we will keep offering similar things and want to try and develop ideas for co-operative bulk buying of certain products every business needs. We do need to find a 'project champion' for this initiative and there is an offer of help from one of the businesses that first suggested the idea (Shaun Samways, The Potting Shed)
Live music on Saturdays - feedback: - All finished now but as always mainly good feedback on this from retailers - Keir has photos to show how well supported some of these events were. Chairs were put out for the audience and this increased "dwell time" significantly.
NOTE: - can anyone let me know if they have an old PC about to be retired/updated as the Arts centre are desperate to replace their 15yr old one that is beyond its last legs?

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