[David A]

I'm not sure it was flight to the suburbs, safety issues and more homeless people as much as it was the City closing 102 Avenue at the end of 2017 to start LRT construction,(something not much different to what the original LRT construction did to Jasper Avenue) and from which Jasper Avenue has still never recovered),

In both cases, both traffic and pedestrian movement was severely constrained and people coped by either developing new routes downtown or by simply no longer coming downtown. Once that happens, it's incredibly difficult to restore those previous volumes, particularly as many of the local retailers that were supported by and relied on that street activity didn't survive the transition.

Very good points. I was thinking of around 2015 when possibly the decline started. However I agree the LRT construction a few years later made things much worse and went on for many years.

Unfortunately our city doesn't support retailer disrupted by projects like this, which in this case dragged on even longer than planned, so likely many either closed or moved elsewhere perhaps never to return downtown again.

 

[kcantor]

^
We also shouldn’t forget that for two years the City concurrently shut down one direction of Jasper Avenue for the summer construction season to repair the Convention Centre roof… and then there were the Jasper Avenue New Vision closures and block after block of sidewalk and lane closures for both public and private construction.