The Value of Investing in Canadian Downtowns - International ...

Key Patterns of Investment
The City has been systematically building up neighbourhoods in its downtown. There appear to have been three key
directions in which they are investing most heavily:
1. Building up the cultural heart of the Downtown
Over the past 30 years, the City has been establishing a regionally unique civic arts and culture district around
Winston Churchill Square. The new city hall, with its ‘front yard’ public space and outdoor ice rink, opened in the early
1980s. The square itself was refurbished to better tie it into the urban fabric and to support larger crowds in the past
decade. Surrounding the square are civic amenities including the Stanley Milner Library, the Winspear Centre for
Music, the Citadel Theatre and the Art Gallery of Alberta. The provincial and federal governments have been
supportive of the city’s place-making efforts through grants and decisions to locate institutions near the cluster; for
example, the Art Gallery of Alberta, formerly The Art Gallery of Edmonton, re-opened in early 2010 following an $88M
renovation ($22M was provided by the City of Edmonton). The provincial government has recently announced
funding to relocate the Royal Alberta Museum to a site just north of the city hall.
These public investments have been attracting attention from the private sector. The Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation, for example, has moved its local operations downtown to a site with a view of Churchill Square, which is
seen in its live television broadcasts. Similarly, private developers have been converting buildings overlooking the
square into condominiums and lofts to leverage the increased amenity offered by the City’s investments. The first of
these residential conversions was made in the McLeod Building, resulting in the restoration and redevelopment of an
underused heritage structure. Today residential units overlooking the upgraded Sir Winston Churchill Square
reportedly command a premium on the market.
2. Renewing neighbourhoods – the Warehouse District
The Warehouse Campus Neighbourhood is characterized by underused heritage buildings in a sea of surface
parking lots. Since 1997, the City has made a priority of filling in these gaps in the urban fabric and making better use
of the existing built resources downtown 12 . The approach the City has taken, in essence, has been to invest in a high
quality public realm while providing financial incentives for residential conversion or construction until the
neighbourhood reaches a critical mass of activity that attracts further private investments.
The private sector has shown enthusiasm for the residential grant program. Initially, the grant program had funding
for 1,000 residential dwellings across the downtown, and funds were exhausted more quickly than the City expected.
While the City was assembling an extension of the grant program, the development industry demonstrated the
dramatic improvement in the downtown property market by building another 1,000 dwellings without grants. The City
has refocused the program on the Warehouse Campus Neighbourhood in an effort to increase residential growth
there.
The other half of that strategy—the deployment of improved urban design to attract private investment—is best
illustrated by the case of the 104 Street Promenade. During scheduled roadwork, the City narrowed the roadway and
widened the sidewalk, implementing high quality urban design to upgrade the public realm. Additional streetscape
improvements, such as heritage street lamps, were financed by a local improvement levy on adjacent properties.
New residents and businesses quickly moved to line 104 Street, including several hundred condominium units,
sidewalk-oriented retail and restaurants, and an urban-format supermarket. Design guidelines incorporated into the
12
City of Edmonton. (2010). Capital City Downtown Plan: The Way We Grow. Retrieved from:
http://www.edmonton.ca/city_government/documents/Downtown_Plan_DRAFT_Feb_10.pdf. Accessed 2012 May 14.
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