Englewood Exploring Downtown Public WiFi Zone

Charge up your laptops and tablets, folks, free public WiFi may soon be coming to Englewood's downtown shopping district.

The Englewood Economic Development Corporation is considering launching a pilot program this summer to test whether a WiFi zone spanning the city's downtown shopping district along Palisade Avenue between Van Brunt Street and Engle Street would attract out-of-towners to city businesses.

EEDC chairman Adam Brown said the group has spent the past year discussing the project and observing cities around the country that have implemented public WiFi zones to get an idea how doing so in Englewood might impact businesses.

"We’re reexamining this with a view towards answering the question, 'Would this be something that would attract customers to downtown Englewood?'" Brown said. "We’ve looked at various towns around the country and we’ve found that the answer seems to be 'most definitely, yes,' particularly young people."

Brown was initially skeptical of the need to provide public WiFi because cell phones already allow users to surf the web over their own 3G networks, but said he was ultimately sold on the project by the recent explosion in popularity of tablets like the iPad.

"We’ve seen how the iPad has completely changed people’s reading habits," Brown said. "They read the paper, they read The New Yorker, they read The Economist, and the vast majority of iPads are not 3G compatible. They rely on public WiFi."

Brown said the EEDC, a private organization funded through local business licensing fees, is considering various ways to pay for the project, includng one in which the WiFi operator would fit the bill and recoup its investment through advertising.

He said the project was being proposed under the EEDC's purview of helping local businesses attract customers from outside the city, not necessarily as a perk for Englewood residents.

"It’s really not meant for people who live in Englewood, it’s meant for people who do business in Englewood," said Brown, who added that he's already spoken with strategically-located building owners around town who are enthusiastic about participating in the project.

Brown said the EEDC would decide how to proceed with the public WiFi project before summer starts and likely roll it out in phases across town.

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