What does DTK need?

[the_conestoga_guy]

I think that there's a real discussion to be had about whether or not we "want" to draw people downtown. Intuitively, it makes sense that we want to support our local downtown businesses by maximizing the number of patrons coming through. But there's the push-back from local residents who don't want the compromises that come with extra traffic and parking. There's also the considerable push-back against entertainment options like moving the arena downtown.

I think that we need to be focusing on two things to create a quality downtown: increasing the population of downtown residents, and building a good downtown transit hub. Bonus points if we can build our AAA active transportation networks and minimize passing-through traffic from cars.

Once these are in place, I think we'll organically see investment from private businesses like Canadian Tire or Lululemon.

Huh? Why would you not want to draw people downtown...? Of course we do! And big brands are a good way to do it. Local businsesses are great and everything, but not everybody cares, wants or needs to shop at them. Sometimes you just need to grab some clothes at a Zara or want to eat a McDonald's burger. You can do that in literally every big city in the world but you have to literally drive your car (or waste an hour on a bus) to go to the suburbs to do something so basic in Waterloo Region. And no, investing in transit hubs, bike lanes and other frivolous nonsense like that isn't going to bring many people downtown. Things people need will.

So long as we have a downtown that consists primarily of nothing but small local businesses and a few shops that close by 6PM, then the vast majority of people living in Waterloo Region aren't going to bother to come downtown (which is especially worsened with the zombie junkies that are living all over the place now). But I guarantee if you could wave a magic wand and have a bunch of popular stores open up, have some good entertainment venues, open up some mainstream food places, make the drug addicts disappear and so on, then people would likely flock down there. Your average citizen has really no reason to venture downtown and that is a problem.

I guess I didn't make the point that I was trying to make as soundly as I hoped. As downtown exists now, if we simply put a Canadian Tire there, people would likely drive to it instead of another one as long as its the closest. That's great for Canadian Tire, but it doesn't benefit the other local businesses and it congests the downtown roads with cars.

My hope is that we can expand the transportation infrastructure first so that it allows people to find alternatives to driving if they want to come downtown. Then, once the infrastructure is in place, and once there's a substantial number of people living downtown, private businesses will "want" to actually set up shop there. Because right now, those established brands are perfectly happy to stay in the suburban shopping centres.

To cite Jane Jacobs' "eyes on the street" theory, we should see reduced petty crime downtown if more people are frequenting there at all hours. Plus, the added tax revenues from the new businesses and residential property taxes could go towards expanding social programs for the unhoused.*

* Unless, of course, we decide to re-allocate budgets from other city programs to address this sooner