The Gig Harbor Historic Waterfront Association is nearing the end of a major rebranding project after it enlisted the services of the consulting firm Arnett Muldrow & Associates and heard suggestions from dozens of community stakeholders at a three-day workshop earlier this month.

GHHWA president Gary Glein, a downtown resident, sat down with the Peninsula Gateway last week to discuss the rebranding and his organization’s effort to refocus the way it serves downtown businesses.

Peninsula Gateway: What was the motivation for this rebranding project?
Gary Glein: Our name doesn’t really convey what we do. The “historic” gets in the way. We’ve actually had people come to our booth and ask about the museum. So we started by saying, “We need to fix our own name and logo and brand so it better represents what we really do,” and that evolved into what we did this year, which was a little bit broader.

PG: What would be your ideal result, after this process is complete?
GG: First, we will be proposing a name change, with a new logo and everything, to our board of directors in March. It’s not approved yet. (The consultants) have recommended that we be called the Downtown Waterfront Alliance instead. But they’ve also dealt with the branding of the downtown area for everybody.

What’s become probably the most important thing about this has been bringing the community together. We started out looking at what we needed to do and said, this is an opportunity to get partners within the community – the city, the chamber, Uptown, Gig Harbor North and other organizations. We had more than 70 people in these (workshop) sessions where we got input, and people were excited about bringing people together who frequently were in separate silos in the past.

PG: How can downtown, Uptown and other areas work together, instead of competing for business?
GG: My belief is, and I think increasingly more people believe, that we all win together. If you go back a few years, there would be people down here who would say, “Uptown is taking business from us,” or, “Gig Harbor North is taking business from us.”

But really, we’re kind of the emotional heart of the city down here, but if people come here, then they still shop at Uptown or Gig Harbor North. So part of it was saying, “Let’s look at how we can all be supportive.”

Taking Uptown, they were a financial supporter (of the rebranding project). That says that they want to be part of this, not because they’re trying to steal business, but because we should represent the whole community well.

And in terms of downtown, there have been things like, “Do we separate Finholm from downtown? What is downtown?” And the conclusion of everybody, including the consultant, was that, no, the whole waterfront area is one continguous area, and it’s really viewed as a downtown waterfront area. That’s the best thing to call it.

So we’re trying to get more clarity of identity down here, and then some of the common threads that we do, there’s no reason that other people who promote other businesses, even those that aren’t downtown, can’t look at a common thread that helps all of us.

PG: What other information have the consultants provided? Have you discussed ways to bring more foot traffic, and more business, downtown?
GG: That’s actually their primary line of business. They’re community planners and developers, and we’re having them do work to better identify the market potential for downtown.
They’ll go in and do a study, to look at the demographics of the trade area, and they’ll divine things that are synergistic and make sense. They’re going to fine-tune what they presented to us at the end of January. We’ll get a total package of their recommendations and how to implement them, but also on the economic data we’ve provided them with on all the businesses downtown, what the square footage is, estimates of sales.

We’ve been studying the trade area in Gig Harbor, in both winter and summer, demographics – so they’ll be looking at all that data and saying, “These are the things that would make sense to add that would strengthen the area and go along with its character.”

PG: How will you adapt these changes into your overall mission?
GG: Our mission is pretty simple. Our goal is to create economic stability and vibrancy downtown that’s consistent with the historic, quaint character of the community. It’s a balance between those two things. You don’t want to overemphasize the economics to the detriment of the character, but you don’t want to be just looking out for the historical character, either.
Part of our belief is that, if the economics work well, it’ll retain that small-town character. If the economics don’t work, it won’t.