The Vilanova i la Geltrú City Council plans to invest 1.5 million euros between now and 2027 in various actions that “update” local trade and restaurants. The Pla d’Enfortiment del Comerç Local, presented this Wednesday, includes several actions to beautify the streets, offer new digital tools in establishments, new customer loyalty campaigns and the launch of the pilot test of an Àrea de Promoció Econòmica Urban (APEU).
The Pla d’Enfortiment del Comerç Local includes five strategic lines, starting with creating a marketing plan to boost activity in the city center. In addition, a training program is planned to help merchants digitize their activity and update their dynamics.
The third axis of the plan focuses on improvements in public space, both in terms of lighting, as well as reinforcing park-and-ride parking and signage to the center, as well as investments in street furniture.
Regarding the fourth axis, this is based on offering various customer loyalty campaigns, both with public and private initiatives. For example, when offering discounts or reductions in parking fees. Lastly, a fifth strategic line is planned focused on setting up an APEU (economic promotion area).
On this last issue, the Councilor for Commerce, Jordi Medina, has detailed that this promotion area would allow the creation of a new management body between the City Council and the business community “to improve strategies together through economic contributions.”
The intention is that it be formed by the 324 companies in the most central streets of Vilanova, leaving the creation of future APEUs to other commercial hubs of the city for later.
Its constitution is now a very incipient phase. In fact, a diagnosis has just been made in collaboration with the Barcelona Provincial Council. If the merchants and restaurateurs agree with the City Council to move it forward, Medina estimates that it could be a reality in January 2024 and maintains that “it would be a guarantee to achieve commercial capitality.”
The plan to strengthen local commerce and launch the APEU comes three months after a large commercial park opened on the outskirts of Vilanova, an infrastructure criticized by small establishments, due to its size and because the space has surpassed the liberalization of schedules everywhere in the city.
Being able to open throughout Vilanova from Monday to Sunday has been a measure rejected from the first day by downtown merchants, who warn that they do not have the capacity to have the blinds up seven days a week.
The representative of the Viu Comerç merchants association, Mercè Codina, has recalled the suspicion of this time liberalization and has defended the value of local establishments. Codina has assured that the plan promoted by the City Council “can be a very powerful tool”, but she has called for a “titanic job” from all parties, public and private. “We have to maintain ourselves as a local business, and it is essential that we modernize and digitize, because the future of the planet is in our hands”, she assured.
In her turn, the mayoress Olga Arnau has intoned the criticism of the merchants and has pointed out that “it is not a question of a competition between the shops in the center and the commercial park, but of updating the former”. Arnau has defended that the objective is to place local commerce “on the first line of departure” and has indicated online distributors as “great competition” to combat.
