[David A]

"For downtown to be successful, it's going to need more people living right in the heart of it"

Here we are, 40 years later, and we're still trying to get this part right

This is because we keep on trying to address the symptoms and not the fundamental problems. Downtown needs to be more desirable to attract people.

That means more good paying corporate office jobs nearby downtown, more retail and not a half empty mall, safe streets, not a dumping ground for the provinces social problems.

When we fix these three things more people will want to live downtown.

 

[Munanyo]

@David A hit the nail on the head.

The city needs to start attracting more corporate offices back to the core. Get businesses and retail to want to take a shot at setting up shop (with grants etc.) and make the core more aesthetically pleasing (hurry up Jasper Ave revitalization).

I had friends from Toronto visit me here in August. They were pretty shocked how desolate and gross our downtown was and expected there to be much more to see and do.

 

[David A]

@David A hit the nail on the head.

The city needs to start attracting more corporate offices back to the core. Get businesses and retail to want to take a shot at setting up shop (with grants etc.) and make the core more aesthetically pleasing (hurry up Jasper Ave revitalization).

I had friends from Toronto visit me here in August. They were pretty shocked how desolate and gross our downtown was and expected there to be much more to see and do.

I went to Toronto recently and there were things I liked about it and some I did not, but overall it works well. Eaton Centre is an example of a vibrant downtown mall and there is plenty of other retail too.

And its not just Toronto, but similarly in Vancouver and Calgary too. Edmonton has to realize that attracting big projects to industrial areas outside the city, while helpful isn't going to do much if anything for downtown and stop just focusing on that for economic development.

 

[erudyk_29]

Calgary has kind of cornered the market for big time offices in Alberta. Most of the big companies in the Province are oil firms who base their head offices out of CGY. Edmonton does have a couple big office job creators like Stantec, the Provincial and Municipal government and some medium sized companies like Bioware. We're never going to get the same level of large coporate interest and investment as Calgary just as a consequence of history. As a result I think Edmonton should focus on more medium sized tech companies like Bioware, as well as encouraging smaller scale firms and startups to move their operations from suburban centres to downtown.

 

[TAS]

Calgary has kind of cornered the market for big time offices in Alberta. Most of the big companies in the Province are oil firms who base their head offices out of CGY. Edmonton does have a couple big office job creators like Stantec, the Provincial and Municipal government and some medium sized companies like Bioware. We're never going to get the same level of large coporate interest and investment as Calgary just as a consequence of history. As a result I think Edmonton should focus on more medium sized tech companies like Bioware, as well as encouraging smaller scale firms and startups to move their operations from suburban centres to downtown.

And we have one large post-secondary institution (MacEwan) and another one growing at a good rate (Norquest).

 

[David A]

And we have one large post-secondary institution (MacEwan) and another one growing at a good rate (Norquest).

Yes, I agree this is one positive thing, but unfortunately students don't have quite the same economic impact of more well paid corporate employees living nearby.

Perhaps that is why we still have a few things like Winners and Dollarama downtown, but places like Holts have left.

In general, people are going to gravitate towards living where the jobs are and in Edmonton this growth has mainly been in suburban and outlying areas.

 

[buildings]

^have you forgotten NAIT and UofA?

 

[David A]

^have you forgotten NAIT and UofA?

Although students in these educational institutions may live downtown or elsewhere in Edmonton, NAIT itself is in close proximity to a large mall outside the downtown core.

Likewise, Southgate Mall is fairly accessible from the U of A, so I expect many U of A students would go there. So I think the economic benefits to downtown from these two would be less than those located right downtown.

 

[kcantor]

Firstly, I don'd believe Calgary has "cornered the market". If anything we have ceded the market. Those are not the same thing.

Secondly, we don't need large tenants per se. Vancouver's average/median downtown tenant size is approximately the same as ours and has been for decades.

Thirdly, you have to do the right things to support a healthy downtown - you can't expect a healthy downtown to suddenly surface out of nowhere and then start doing the things necessary to support it. You'd think after forty years we'd know the difference between the cart and the horse when it comes to which one comes first.

Lastly - for now - our educational insitutions are a tremendous asset for downtown not only for the vibrancy they add while they're in school but for the potential of attracting them as longer term residents of the core, not in student housing per se but in market housing that is attractive to students but that they can stay in after graduation whether they end up working in the core or elsewhere where they can provide the kind of two-way reverse commuting to major employment centres - if we ever wake up enough to provide that for them - that makes for a much healthier transit system financially.

 

[IanO]

"For downtown to be successful, it's going to need more people living right in the heart of it"

Here we are, 40 years later, and we're still trying to get this part right

40 years and a city/region that has grown by a million people... and less than 10,000 more in the Downtown... or 1%

 

[erudyk_29]

Firstly, I don'd believe Calgary has "cornered the market". If anything we have ceded the market. Those are not the same thing.

"Cornered", "ceded" doesn't really matter, my point is that if you're a large corporation in Alberta, your offices are probably in Calgary. This is a consequence of history more than anything, to my understanding the reason Calgary ended up getting all the big oil companies is because they found the oil in the south first, and so companies decided to set up shop there. Calgary also implemented some tax incentives when this happened that encouraged more offices to locate there. Leduc and Fort Mac were found later, and so Edmonton didn't get much in that initial office boom, so they didn't offer major incentives.

Edmonton definitely could have done more to support office growth in the city at this time, but it's more a result of Calgary finding oil near it first.

It also doesn't really matter how we got here though, because the situation right now is that Calgary got most of the big headquarters and Edmonton got left to the way side. This is why I think more new office construction downtown should focus more on smaller tenants. So less big glass towers and more smaller scale, lower rent developments. This doesn't mean they need to be crappy, but we're not going to be getting major office tower construction for massive, multi-national corporations the way Calgary has.

 

[Greenspace]

I would just add to this discussion that Edmonton being a government town, the current government keeping those jobs Downtown is not a given. While they have current leases we do need to recognize their contribution to Downtown both is workers and leases in many buildings, office workers being the #1 immediate thing that can fix all our problems.

 

[David A]

I would just add to this discussion that Edmonton being a government town, the current government keeping those jobs Downtown is not a given. While they have current leases we do need to recognize their contribution to Downtown both is workers and leases in many buildings, office workers being the #1 immediate thing that can fix all our problems.

The downtown here has a number of government workers, but overall the city has also strong private sector, probably more so than many of other provincial capital cities. Unfortunately for Edmonton, government employment here is not really growing much, at best it is stable. Likewise with the private sector downtown.

People mainly live in proximity to where their jobs are, so somehow Edmonton has to boost jobs downtown if it really wants more growth in this area.

 

[David A]

Firstly, I don'd believe Calgary has "cornered the market". If anything we have ceded the market. Those are not the same thing.

Secondly, we don't need large tenants per se. Vancouver's average/median downtown tenant size is approximately the same as ours and has been for decades.

Thirdly, you have to do the right things to support a healthy downtown - you can't expect a healthy downtown to suddenly surface out of nowhere and then start doing the things necessary to support it. You'd think after forty years we'd know the difference between the cart and the horse when it comes to which one comes first.

Lastly - for now - our educational insitutions are a tremendous asset for downtown not only for the vibrancy they add while they're in school but for the potential of attracting them as longer term residents of the core, not in student housing per se but in market housing that is attractive to students but that they can stay in after graduation whether they end up working in the core or elsewhere where they can provide the kind of two-way reverse commuting to major employment centres - if we ever wake up enough to provide that for them - that makes for a much healthier transit system financially.

I agree, there seems to be a very defeatist attitude here to attracting businesses, which I feel has turned into a self fulfilling situation. I have seen over the years, some half hearted efforts made and then given up.

We have to be smart about the size of businesses targeted, I don't think we are going to get large international banks. So your Vancouver example of the size of businesses there is a very good point.

 

[Gus Haynes]

People mainly live in proximity to where their jobs are, so somehow Edmonton has to boost jobs downtown if it really wants more growth in this area.

I mean, maybe. But I will say this: I've worked downtown for the better part of 20 years, in public and private sector jobs. During that time, only a tiny fraction of my coworkers lived downtown. In fact, in my current office, I don't have a single coworker who lives downtown. In my observation, the amount of people who want to live downtown just to be close to their office is not a particularly dramatic number.