The Main Street Saskatchewan conference took place in Humboldt Thursday, during the morning Kieron Hunt spoke about the importance of balancing downtown development and suburban growth.

The Director of Canadian Operations for Cushing Terrell Architecture says no matter how a community moves forward, they need the businesses to lead the way or progress will sputter.

"There's been too many examples elsewhere where initiatives have been put in place without the support of the business community and you won't get anywhere. If the business community does not support the initiatives it's an uphill battle the whole time and sometimes the business community are better to lead the process."

Such events come to mind in Humboldt such as Streetfest and the upcoming Black Friday shopping event later this month.

Hunt explained how it's even more critical for the downtown businesses to lead any initiative such as the Main Street program because 80 percent of core businesses in centres are locally owned, that number changes to national chains in the outer edges.

When he asked the crowd what is important for downtown's and a grocery store was near the top. Humboldt has felt the loss of their downtown Co-op store. Hunt said urgency is needed to keep important businesses in downtown cores.

"Maybe you could have got a hold of them before hand and wondered are they just outgrowing their existing building or are they having issues with parking? From understanding the challenges some of those buildings face ahead of time perhaps you can implement policies or zoning to find the right solutions."

Hunt said the number one most important service to any community's downtown is banks, which he was happy to see Humboldt's all were located on Main Street.

"I was very impressed to see that vacancies weren't very high, it seemed quite vibrant down there and the banks were there. I went to the Royal Bank there because I knew there would be a bank downtown. When I drove into town and saw there wasn't a bank at the suburban I knew I could go to the tried, tested and true and that the banks would be downtown and thankfully they were."

You can hear more from Hunt in his interview with Bolt FM's Clark Stork below.