Downtown Stakeholders Forum

The Downtown Stakeholders Forum is a place for anyone with a connection to downtown Vancouver to collaborate with residents, business owners and City and local agency staff on community-driven projects to enhance downtown Vancouver's atmosphere, community engagement, marketing and vitality. The forum was created through a partnership between Vancouver's Downtown Association and the City of Vancouver.

The forum is currently meeting virtually every fourth Tuesday of the month at 1 p.m. (see “Upcoming Meetings” for Remote Meeting Access info each month). The meetings are open to the public. Please note that the August 2021 meeting will be held on the fifth Tuesday (August 31, 2021 from 1-2 p.m.).

Each year, the Downtown Stakeholders Forum collaborates with City of Vancouver staff to identify priorities for Downtown and designate a focus for the year. At its January 2021 meeting, attendees were polled on priorities for this year with the following results:

• Business Survival/Recovery 56%
• Appearance/Image 7%
• Traffic 7%
• Transportation Planning/Circulation 7%
• Parking 4%
• No Answer 19%

Examples of Prior Projects:

In 2019, VDA and the City worked with downtown stakeholders on improvements to the appearance of Downtown’s Main Street from 5th to 15 streets. The project is known as the “Main Street Appearance Project” (MSAP). This work builds on 2009 and 2015 studies that offered ideas to improve Main Street’s design and appearance within the public realm. Improvements include the 12^th & Main Artlet and 4-Way Stop, the Bike Art Park on Main and a Storefront Activation Team. Vancouver’s Downtown Association, the City, downtown stakeholders and numerous volunteers used time during the 2020 pandemic to safely implement the Artlet and bike art park projects along Downtown’s Main Street.

In 2018, the downtown stakeholders, the City and Vancouver’s Downtown Association implemented several improvements to make it easier for visitors to navigate the downtown area, easily find the new waterfront attractions, and highlight existing points of interest in the historic core and Uptown districts. Improvements included the, 6th Street Gateway Sign, new downtown street banners, pedestrian and vehicular wayfinding signs, a downtown walking map and a downtown clean up day.