The following article, by the Canadian Press “Can Canadian downtowns find new purpose in a post-office era?” is a direct result of the Ontario BIA Associations attendance at the first BIA Parliament Day as organized by IDA Canada.
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Kay Matthews doesn’t mince words when asked about the state of businesses fighting to survive in downtown cores across Ontario.
“We’re struggling,” said Matthews, executive director of the Ontario Business Improvement Area Association.
“We’re seeing the impacts from one end to the province to the other … For the first time, Ottawa’s even seeing economic impacts that they’ve never seen in past.”
The experiences in Ontario’s cities are echoed across Canada, as downtowns grapple with high vacancy rates, the post-pandemic work culture and the prospect that crowds of office workers may never return in full.
This was published in papers all across Canada, including The Windsor Star, Global News, CP24, The Toronto Star, the St. Catharines Standard, The Peterborough Examiner, Bradford Today, and 31 others in Ontario alone.
