My two cents as a non real estate insider is that they just market their downtown much better than ours, and that reflects on the interest. The perception probably plays a big role in getting people to invest money in larger projects. If you market yourself as a glitzy discount Toronto, then you're going to have people and investors believe it and spend money accordingly, either through investment or through a consumer's willingness to pay.
It's why I'm happy that there was some media buzz about the 1,800 residential units planned around O-day'min park, and I hope that continues when more of the almost 3000 units we have being built or in the DP stage move forward. We do such a bad job of marketing downtown to the public, compared to Calgary. They're patting themselves on the back for their office conversion program and the units that come with it (which works well in their situation), yet we barely talk about our downtown's successes and future trajectory. I'm hoping that changes in some way when we get the final results from the Student Housing incentive and the expected numbers from the Attainable Housing Incentive.
Hell, I'd be happy just seeing updates from the city on residential units or the yearly downtown population as a KPI, which I know is part of the Downtown Investment Plan, but publish and market that heavily to the public.
If we keep yelling into the void at how many new residential units are coming to downtown, others might take notice and ask why that's happening and maybe even get in the trend.
