Kay Matthews didn’t mince words when asked about the situation for businesses fighting to survive in Ontario’s downtown core.
“We’re struggling,” said Matthews, executive director of the Ontario Business Improvement Regions Association.
“We’re having impacts from one end of the province to the other… For the first time in Ottawa, we’re even seeing economic impacts that we’ve never seen in the past.”
The experience in Ontario cities is mirrored across Canada, with downtowns facing high vacancy rates, a post-pandemic work culture and the prospect that crowds of office workers may never fully return. .
This could spur a fundamental change in the nature of Canada’s downtown districts, but experts say such large-scale changes will take time and require major investments to bring people back. and infrastructure changes will be required.
Members of the Canadian International Downtown Association gathered in Ottawa in November to appeal to the federal government to extend repayment deadlines for emergency loans businesses received during the pandemic.
But beyond loan relief, the group also wants downtown business associations to receive direct funding from the federal government to strengthen their neighborhoods.
In cities like Toronto, Montreal, Victoria and Halifax, vacancy rates for downtown street stores range from 11 to 14 per cent. Vacancy rates in downtown Edmonton and Winnipeg are as high as 33%.
Association president Kate Fenske, who is also CEO of the Downtown Winnipeg Business Improvement Zone, said a weakened downtown would undermine the country’s overall economic and fiscal stability.
“If your downtown isn’t strong, your city can’t be strong,” Fenske said. “And if you look at Winnipeg, for example, our downtown… represents less than 1 per cent of the total land mass, but generates 17 per cent and 14 per cent of commercial and business taxes. So those funds actually supports services and amenities throughout the city.”
Federal Tourism Minister Soraya Martínez Ferrada, whose portfolio includes Quebec’s economic development, said she has met with several representatives of the region’s downtown areas.
Martinez Ferrada said the federal government is trying to help revitalize downtowns through multiple agencies, but there is also an opportunity to create new ways to bring people back that don’t rely on office workers and rethink the core purpose of downtowns. Yes, he said.
“One of the opportunities we see is developing kind of a new wave of how these cities can utilize their downtown cores,” she said.
“So I think we’re going to see a lot of changes in terms of what downtown means in the future. And yes, tourism is a big part of that.”
The University of Toronto’s Department of Urban Studies is running the Downtown Revival project, which charts the state of downtowns across North America.
The study compares the current number of unique visitors in cities’ downtowns to the same period in 2019, just before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
As of October, Montreal’s visitor numbers were at about 67 per cent of pre-pandemic levels, followed by Toronto at 70 per cent, Winnipeg at 76 per cent and London, Ont., at 79 per cent. Vancouver had the highest number of visitors in Canada at 85%, and Mississauga, Ontario had the highest number of visitors at 91%.
Karen Chapple, dean of the University of Toronto’s urban studies department, said many downtowns are designed to be “overly reliant” on office space, and transportation and urban design all cater to that economy.
Chapple said downtown has experienced transitions in the past, including a shift away from manufacturing in the early 1900s, but it could take decades for neighborhoods to adapt to new business models. .
“You can’t change the economy overnight,” she says. “They’re going to have to diversify a little bit more again. And that’s a process that takes time. If we’re true to history, the rebuild will probably take more than 10 years.”
Punita McBrien, executive director of the Edmonton Downtown Business Association, said attracting more residential development downtown will be a challenge for prairie cities like Edmonton and Winnipeg.
The problem, she says, is that downtown development costs are high and rents are low.
Mr McBrien said developers needed the government to provide further incentives for such projects.
“I think we came through the pandemic with a lot of optimism…and I think the realization is starting to take hold that where we are now is kind of a new normal.
“Some people live downtown, and some people still treat downtown like a shopping and dining destination,” she says. “But as we know, we can’t rely on office crowds five days a week.”
Vandalism and other crime are on the rise in some city centers, putting a strain on businesses.
Tasha Morizio, general manager of Montreal’s Boulevard Saint-Laurent Development Association, said businesses in the area have reported three incidents in one week of storefront windows being broken and inventory being stolen.
“This is just another hurdle that these small mom-and-pop stores have to deal with,” Morizio said. “And obviously, our hearts are open. We’re not here to say we don’t want you to come to our mall. We need more resources. And I think we need more leadership from the federal government.”
However, police statistics do not necessarily indicate that crime levels are increasing.
For example, commercial break-ins in the central business district decreased by 26 per cent over an eight-week period this fall compared to the same period last year, according to the Vancouver Police Department’s GeoDash crime statistics hub.
Crimes against people fell by 12% over the same period, but tampering and theft from vehicles increased slightly.
Toronto police statistics comparing 2021 and 2022 show crime has increased in some areas of downtown while falling in others, while Ottawa police It was announced that the crime rate in the 14th Ward, where the area is located, increased by 7.3%.
Matthews, from Ontario, said data doesn’t necessarily reflect reality, and recently the owners of one store announced they were closing because they were “tired of having to replace” broken windows. said.
“So it’s not just happening once, it’s happening over and over again,” she said. “Downtown Hamilton is home to some beautiful, picturesque, lively properties dating back to the 1890s to the 1920s, but we also see thefts of things like doorknobs.”
Montreal’s Morizio said the long-term solution may be to re-establish downtown as a place for social connections, rather than just going to the office.
She said Montreal has started installing pedestrian streets to create public space, but such projects are expensive and not applicable everywhere.
“People are only going to come to work two or three days a week…so what we have to do to be able to compete with that is our malls need to become almost a third place. I mean, there is,” she says. She mentioned familiar public places that people can easily go to.
“Besides living and working, we need spaces where people can come and connect. That’s a lot of what we’ve lost in the pandemic.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 1, 2023.
