Watch: City hall investment feud. Recap
The results are in for the cities bi annual report on how the downtown business sector fared between 2016 and 2017.
“It’s encouraging to see London’s downtown growing in the right direction…”
City officials are looking at these numbers as proof of successful policy planning from both the city and other public organizations promoting the growth of our city. Downtown London Manager Janette MacDonald said “It’s encouraging to see London’s downtown growing in the right direction – more residents, more businesses and more investment lead to good things for the entire City – not just the downtown.”
With the recent success of the Juno’s the city is looking forward to slathering on the economic icing of the downtown cake. Numbers that are likely even further juiced up by the impact of the Dundas Place project and Fanshawe college opening up its new campus. The injection of foot traffic into the area was hailed by federal Mp Peter Fragiskatos at the opening of the new downtown campus, where Fragiskatos spoke of how pleased managers at Covent Garden Market are with a rush of new customers and students moving into the area.
Below are some of the highlights of the report;
- In 2017, the downtown made up 0.2% of London’s land area and contributed 5.42% of the total municipal taxes.
- The assessment value of downtown has increased 61% over the past 10 years, and reached $1.75 billion in 2017.
- Downtown retained approximately 77% of London’s total supply of office space, and the retail vacancy rate dropped to 7.0% in 2017 from 7.9% in 2015.
- Approximately 2,000 jobs were added in the last two years, resulting in approximately 51,000 daytime employees in downtown – over 20% of all daytime workers in the city.
- Music, entertainment and cultural events drew over 3.2 million people to indoor and outdoor downtown destinations in 2017.
- The City hosted Country Music Week and the Canadian Country Music Awards which created an $8.4 million impact on the economy.
- Community Improvement Plan financial incentives contributed approximately $267,000 in loans during this two-year period, leveraging over $835,000 in private sector investment.
“It just went right to City Hall for approval”
All of this came out as a handful of London businesses brought their infighting into council chambers blasting the downtown business improvement area manager Janette MacDonald. Business owners accuse Janette MacDonald of financial mismanagement. In their view the group that collects money from the businesses in the area, has made half gestures in transparency and openness. A claim that MacDonald roundly refuted saying “before I got there, I don’t think the membership ever saw a budget” the budget and the decisions about what investments will be included in it has been a primary source of contention, “It just went right to City Hall for approval” which is all the board is obligated to do.
Projects like BRT and Dundas place have been strongly opposed by some businesses for the long periods of construction that the plans call for. With these new numbers it gets kind of hard to see a downside, even from the perspective of the businesses that signed the petition. The numbers show that they’ve seen an increase in traffic and spending in the area, even through construction periods.
Despite the negativity these numbers should give Londoners something to be proud of, and as Councillor Kayabaga put it “its good to be able to show people that things are working…” and “hopefully we can start focusing on the positives.”
