It's all about attracting people and businesses to establish here and putting a spotlight directly on top of our city. 

That's the goal for the Downtown Moose Jaw committee, a group of local business owners, community members, and various others who all gathered on Monday evening at the Moose Jaw Public Library for their latest meeting. 

New and current members were in attendance sitting through informative presentations, and at one point event split into groups to discuss a variety of topics - one of which Jody Chell, member, and Manager of the Moose Jaw Home Grown Market, said was very interesting. 

"There's a different kind of aspect with our marketing because yes we're wanting tourists, we are a tourist destination, lots of people travel from all over Canada to see us so we have to work on that. Plus, we're also trying to attract our local residents to shop downtown, so I think there are the two different aspects of how we're going to approach that."

Agreeing with Chell and another member who is also the Owner of Wrapture Spa and Boutique, Vicki Watson, said we have so many things to be proud of that it's almost hard to know what we need to narrow our focus on to share with residents and visitors.

"We're trying to find out what's important to all the businesses and how we want to share our story with the world and what that looks like. There's a lot of mixed messages around Moose Jaw and it's all good, but whether we're the Friendly City, whether we're Surprisingly Unexpected if it's the Snowbird Capital... I mean we're all of those things, but really what is the tagline we're going to use to market ourselves."

Noting that the people who are participating are investing their free time in our city, Watson said they're working on picking tasks that need and can get accomplished.

"We want to come up with actionable items that we can as volunteers essentially, items that can get done," said Watson. "People in our community are going to start seeing some changes downtown and hopefully, it's going to help the pride in our community and help our downtown grow."

The most recent project facilitated by the committee before this past meeting was a survey posted on different online platforms, as well as hard copies located in some businesses. Now, the group is looking through the submitted information that was geared towards hearing what residents wanted to see in our downtown and what they liked that we already have. 

"The community engagement survey I think was fantastic.... it's a lot of work to go through the information, but there have been some wonderful comments. As a business owner sometimes you don't think of those things, but it's really great to hear the community's perspective and the feedback has been very valuable," added Watson.

However, the information isn't going to stay with the members; they're also working with an outside party out of Saskatoon who will guide them in a creative direction. 

"They are going to take the information that we've compiled to help with branding our Downtown Moose Jaw, coming up with a tagline, coming up with a logo and I do believe it needs the residents' input and what we think. But because we've lived here for so long I think sometimes it's nice to have a fresh set of eyes," detailed Chell. 

The pair also discussed that it wasn't just a benefit for people who have called our city home for many years, it was a chance for new business owners and leaders to become acquainted with their storefront neighbor or someone they could share issues or successes with.

"Some of the new people that came out who haven't necessarily lived here their whole entire lives got a chance to network and hear other peoples ideas and their concerns," explained Chell. "That was one thing that I liked seeing was new Managers of different stores coming in and being able to network with the people who have been here for quite a long time."

The next meeting for the team is September 4th, where Watson and Chell would like to see even more business owners and passionate community members come out or contact them about a role they could play in the group trying to make the heart of Moose Jaw continue to become even more vibrant.