Meet Anna. She's downtown's new diva

Can Anna Boyonoski get 150 building owners and 250 wildly diverse commercial tenants working together like peas in a pod to get more people downtown?

Maybe.

Boyonoski, introduced tonight as the brand-new manager of Sault Ste. Marie's Downtown Association, is an expert on wild peas.

She wrote a 167-page thesis on the establishment and maintenance of the wild lupine plant to get her master of science degree at the University of Guelph.

Originally from the Sault, Boyonoski has recently been lecturing as a sessional instructor in Algoma University College's geography department.

Frankly, it wasn't her pea-picking expertise that landed her new job as Sault Ste. Marie's new Diva of Downtown.

It was a dozen years of project management and customer relations experience gained with Energy Pathways Inc., an Ottawa-based environmental consulting firm.

Boyonoski worked with the company in Toronto, Cambridge, Kitchener and London before returning to her hometown two years ago.

"It's interesting because my graduate and undergraduate degrees were in geography," she says. "When I graduated from university, which is why I initially went down to Southern Ontario, jobs were a little slim. I was able to get the job with Energy Pathways shortly after I graduated."

"It just took me in a different path. For the next 12 years, I focused on employment programs and management....I think it equipped me pretty well to deal with one of their strategies, which is to build associate membership here at the Downtown Association."

So what does a geographer see when she looks at Sault Ste. Marie's core?

"Geography is so much," Boyonoski says. "Geography is a little bit about history. It's a little bit about location. It's a little bit about people. With the downtown, you see all of that. And you see variations. You see the heritage buildings. You see people with various backgrounds running different types of organizations, whether it's retail or commercial.

"You see a variety of different people, a variety of different backgrounds and a variety of stories to tell. So from a geographic perspective, that's hugely interesting."

Boyonoski was introduced at tonight's annual general meeting of the Downtown Assocation.

Members learned that the organization has managed to balance its budget in the past year.

They learned that the Downtown Development Initiative has been an overwhelming success, with work on many of the projects to begin this spring.

Priorities for the coming year include Boyonoski's membership drive, as well as the development of a mercato, or marketplace.

The latter concept is still a work in progress.

One idea might be to significantly expand the existing farmer's market.

Or, the entire downtown could be converted into one giant neighbourhood mercato, in which a wide variety of foods and merchandise would be available.

A third priority for the Downtown Assocation this year will be continuing ongoing efforts to attract more people to live and work downtown.