“The survey did not include Plaza 400 or the Oxford Building as those buildings are used strictly for office space and are not available for possible retail.”

Anyone who understands the workings of a downtown of a city knows that increasing office use on the ground floor of pedestrian streets is the indicator of a dying downtown.

If anyone were to be interested in helping the downtown survive, they would start to measure the length of storefront along the key streets and provide the percentage length of office, retail, restaurants.

Other than services such as banks, one of which has already moved from the downtown and become a dead UNBC space, the idea is to maximize retail and restaurant space.

I noticed that there is a new lawyers office on George street occupying two store fronts. Terrible blow to George Street!!

Tourists do not go into engineering offices, lawyers offices, social services spaces, accounting offices, etc. etc.

They go into restaurants, antique stores to hopefully find local “treasures” of old PG, art galleries, First Nations stores, clothing stores, shoe stores, local knick knacks, etc. etc.

All those kind of retails spaces are frequented by local residents as well as regional tourist.

Who is working on the project to turn the downtown around and get offices to move upstairs?

DBIA? Don’t seem to be. I have not once heard that “vision” from them nor is it evident from their web site.

Majestic Management? Doubt it. They are after renters, no matter who.

City of PG? Of course not! There is no evidence they even know what I am talking about. They are the ones who write the guidelines of downtown store frontage and then, one after another, the guidelines are broken so often that one might as well throw the OCP in the garbage.

IPG? No way. To detailed for them. They do not sweat the small stuff. No one does.

Is it any wonder the downtown is dying??

Why is the vacancy rate down? Because every time a building becomes vacant it seems the city buys it levels it. No more vacancy problems.

Gus, I think you’re being a little hard on the downtown. Can you balance your pessimism with anything good that’s happened?

What about the crime rate? It’s down significantly.

If you want to keep offices off of the ground floor, it would take some sort of zoning change. Before you run off to do that, keep in mind that an office is better than a boarded up building. Big box stores are not interested in the downtown and won’t be until there is a zoning change. That means that big ground floor spaces would be boarded up if you prevented offices on the ground floor.

The other thing you need to keep in mind is that there is sometimes cross over between offices and retail. Many of the government buildings have a retail/service component on the main floor. For example, the Plaza 400 has Service BC on the ground floor. Service Canada (EI office) is on the ground floor, and in the Oxford building, taxes are paid on the ground floor.

Is a financial planner or insurance broker an office use or retail?

The real question should be with this kind of vacancy rate, why is the government trying to kill the downtown with the Wood Innovation Design Centre? Will building 150,000 square feet bring more businesses to the downtown–no. It will only add to the vacancy rate. Sure some businesses will move into a new building, but it will only rob from the other buildings.

A 15% vacancy rate is pretty high, and it’s only about 70,000 square feet. Will the downtown be better off when the WIDC is built? Will the downtown be better off when the WIDC drives the vacancy rate up to 30%?

Icicle

It was the city that lobbied the province to locate the WIC downtown. Dapper Dan saw the RCMP palace, WIC, and PAC as the crown jewels for the core. IMO the WIC should be at UNBC.

Box stores will never locate in the core because of parking requirements.

The city might as well write the OCP on an Etch-A-Sketch as they override it on every whim.

I agree, Lonesome sparrow.

It would have made good sense to have the Wood Innovation Design Centre at the University.

I think the big lobby effort to have it downtown came from Commonwealth though and not the City.

Commonwealth is hoping to make big bucks out of the Wood Innovation Design Centre. I think they hope to sell their adjacent properties for much more than they paid.

Icicle wrote: “Gus, I think you’re being a little hard on the downtown”

It is called tough love … :-)

In my opinion, until someone is interested in tackling the problem in this town with a tough love approach, we are unlikely to see change. I see no movement from the BIA, for instance.

Here is a report from the BIA in Carleton Place, a town of some 10,000 with a number of recent challenges. The main street is dying even though the population is increasing since it is more and more becoming a bedroom community of those working in the west end of Ottawa.

An indicator they are using is the loss of retail storefront with a replacement of service businesses. It is all about which is the best traffic generator. Selling autoplan? Might be okay from the point of view of traffic generator.

Here is their page: http://www.downtowncarletonplace.com/Retail_Recruitment click on the “towards a vibrant downtown core” to see a short report. Is there a report like that from our BIA? Not on the web site …. So likely does not exist. Should such a report exist for PG. Of course!!! High time!!

Here is an article from Redwood City California. They have been facing a loss of main street businesses due to the economy. Council was proposing to make a time sensitive zoning change that street front spaces could be zoned to service office for a 5 year period if the vacancy rate went over 10%. I think that is actually a good solution for PG. Do not know if a zoning change like that is allowed in BC. It was opposed by retailers and Council, unlike here, actually listened and did not make the change.

I am not talking off the top of my head. This thinking is well researched by others and common knowledge by both retailers who are traffic based rather than a destination store such as Northern Hardware is and a store such as Ruins.

What happened in the last 20 to 30 years on the north side of 3rd between Victoria and Quebec should never have been allowed. The amount of traffic there is not conducive to a downtown main street. This has not happened overnight. It has continued to be allowed and is one of the main reasons why no retailer in their right mind would move into downtown PG.

We have now moved into the sanitizing of downtown …. tear down the very buildings which might allow some retailers to have a viable business .. and replace them with new buildings which will require an economic rent of at least $30/sf.

Go to Nanaimo to see how long it takes to get someone into a space like that built by the City for their convention centre.

I think the idea of the wood innovation centre came from Pat Bell. I think he was trying to help downtown PG. Pat is not a City Planner.

I suspect that building, if it gets built, will house Northern Interior Health offcies whcih are scattered all over town right now, including some store front spaces.

It will keep workers downtown. I would love to see waht would happen if they go to the City and ask to build a multi-storey office building at Westage. In a growing City, a relatively reasonable thing to do. Does anyone think that the City will stop that? If it was privarte, probably not. Since it is government, they may try to pull some strings to stop it.

Of course, we could also recognize the situation for what it is, turn the downtown into a business park, zone retail such that it becomes service retail for those doing business downtown.

Makes a lot of sense to me….. How about the BIA? … can they take a postion on someethin and move with it?

Gus,
I agree that traffic counts for both pedestrians and vehicles are important if we want the downtown to improve.

The City is proposing an extra tax (meters) on the downtown by charging for on-street parking. It won’t be the meters that were there before though. It will be ticket spitters mid-block.

The City didn’t talk to anyone–not even the BIA, they just decided on their own that this was a great idea for the downtown.

What’s your take on it, Gus? Do you think this is good for the downtown? Is the BIA responsible for this too?

I think putting in parking meters at this time in the history of downtown is idiotic, and I have no problem with using that word because that is what it is.

All these things interrelate.

Is the BIA responsible for that. I think the BIA is not in favour of it and has told the City as much. Problem is, this City, unlike Redwood City in California, does not listen to its merchants. I think I understand the problem this City has. It is not uncommon. But they are proposing big city solutions used for healthy retail areas in a small city with dying retail streets. The solution does not fit the problem. I do not know who is the champion for the downtown at the City or IPG. Whoever it is, is doing a lousy job. Maybe THAT is the problem; there is really no one in charge of that … so it becomes the City Manager in the first place by default and then the Mayor because whoever is sitting in that chair is not pressuring the City Manager, and then City Council because whoever is sitting in those chairs are not pressuring the Mayor at Council meetings.

And, yes, the BIA does play an important role. They have all this money and they are not doing the job they need to do as priority #1, improve the businesses of downtown, and primarily the merchants of downtown.

Maybe it is too big an effort on their part. The Camber does squat for downtown. How about teaming up with them. Heck of a lot of workers in the downtown that are working in the city’s commercial concerns. Where are they?

Anyway, someone needs to do some work on this if they have not already. There is plenty of information available from a variety of retail industry associations throughout North America who have a better start at knowing what works and what does not.

Store front stores are needed for downtown, Cities that have turned around their dying core force offices to move up stairs and turn the ground floor into offices. But the first nail in PG downtown was the the zoning from residential to light industrial from Queensway to 1st Ave. Downtowns need residential around them. 2nd nail was pushing/allowing the drug and prostitution trade into the Miller and Connought area turning areas that people at one time wanted to live in to areas that are fighting to survie.

BIA talks about needing people to live downtown yet they do not help the neighbourhoods that are close to downtown. I do not live in the Miller/Connought area but in another neighbourhood close to downtown and we are also fighting the “powers that be” that see every neighbourhood between Central and 1st Ave as “The Hood” and allow schools to close so that new families stop moving in.

I think we can all agree, Gus, that the BIA can’t fix everything. The reason is that they do not have the authority to do the things that need to be done.

At present, the BIA doesn’t have the ear of the Mayor and Council and until the Mayor and Council decide that they want a healthy downtown and they want to work with the BIA to achieve it, there is only so much the BIA can do.

I think, the Mayor and Council want to please Commonwealth. I think the Mayor, Council and Commonwealth are mad that the members kicked Commonwealth off the BIA. Until the Mayor and Council get over this, they are not going to listen to a thing the BIA has to say.