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Kosy123 said:
What exactly is the silver bullet for that? We're seeing more residents, increased foot traffic from workers and students.
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Commercial Rent rates need to crash hard. The fact that over a third of downtown retail units are vacant and yet rent is still crazy high is proof the free market supply and demand model is broken. You should be able to take a risk at starting a retail, cafe, etc business in downtown Edmonton without starting in the hole by thousands of dollars a month. The building owners are too consolidated and comfortable sitting on empty units.
 
thommyjo said:
Empty store front tax?

windsor.ctvnews.ca

‘It's something that we really have to look at’: City councillors teaming up to enact Vacant Storefront Tax

A couple of municipal councillors from Windsor and Ottawa are teaming up to engage all Members of Provincial Parliament about a proposed Vacant Storefront Tax as a way to revitalize downtown cores across Ontario.
windsor.ctvnews.ca windsor.ctvnews.ca
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Taxing land at the pre-demolition value would be the only way to implement this, otherwise you're incentivizing demolition of vacant properties.

The Arlington site comes to mind. A replacement building would be there right now if the property wasn't allowed to be reassessed post fire. The assessed value is a ridiculously low $1,655,500. Not a big tax burden for the absentee owners.

I think the owners of empty storefronts are more helpful to the city than field and parking lot owners. Due to the backwards property tax structure in this province, this would be penalizing the wrong people.
 
Unfortunately many of the vacant spaces need high end or national or international level tenants in and around ice district to be able to afford to set up shop.
The empty store front tax would be ideal for condo buildings that may have enough tenants in their residential part of the building where the landlord feels he can sit on an empty space until he gets the rent he wants.

Also a couple more residential buildings in key locations would further help.
 
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Decent news from the H1 Retail Report from CBRE about downtown
 
Greenspace said:
^https://www.cbre.ca/insights/figures/edmonton-retail-figures-h1-2024

Interesting how much an Oilers playoff run helps. Really is a huge part of our future.

Also clear that malls have too much space, retailers seem to prefer power centres and strip malls.
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Yes, downtown seems to be picking up for a number of reasons - the playoff run helped too.

However, I wonder what is meant here by regional malls. I would think these are the larger malls, which seem quite full with very little vacant space.
 
From the PDF, they define a "regional mall" as: "Anchored by one or two full-line enclosed department stores of generally no less than 300,000 sq. ft."
 
People are noticing how many more students are Downtown this year. I got a bit of an update yesterday.

Both Norquest and MacEwan report that students are demanding to be back in the classroom. Even if they have online studies, they want to be with other students on campus for mental health and other social reasons.

Norquest has 20,000 students this year, expecting 24,000 next year. MacEwan has 24,000 students this year and planning for 30,000 by 2027.
 
That's thousands more for possible retail catered to a younger demographic (looking at you Foosh and other equivalents), cafes, food courts and transit and general downtown foot traffic. That's a fast growing relatively untapped consumer base right there. Plop an H&M somewhere and get that ball rolling lol
 
Kosy123 said:
That's thousands more for possible retail catered to a younger demographic (looking at you Foosh and other equivalents), cafes, food courts and transit and general downtown foot traffic. That's a fast growing relatively untapped consumer base right there. Plop an H&M somewhere and get that ball rolling lol
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No kidding, that is a lot of people in the dt area not including workers, residents and visitors.
 
Great to hear.

I just hope more of them explore further and discover Downtown. The impact is actually relatively small overall at this point and has the potential to be significant.
 
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