In a year-end interview with Taproot, Mayor Amarjeet Sohi said council's declaration of a housing and houselessness emergency in January led to real change, despite provincial criticism at the time that it was performative.
edmonton.taproot.news
Downtown investment
Sohi offered thoughts on the
Downtown Investment Plan, co-authored by organizations including
BILD Edmonton Metro, the
Downtown Revitalization Coalition, and the
Edmonton Downtown Business Association. The plan calls for governments to invest $427 million in Edmonton’s downtown to improve the public realm, and for the city to offer financial incentives for office-to-residential conversions. But Sohi said it would
take too long for these incentives to be paid back through property taxes for them to be viable.
“I don’t think it is fair to ask working families and hardworking small businesses to deeply subsidize office conversions, which are very, very expensive to do, where the return on investment will take almost 85 years to recover,” he said.
Sohi added that the city has invested close to $2 billion in downtown since 2015.