[someone123]

I remember reading that the building was originally constructed for an insurance company (Acadian Insurance?) but soon became home to the CBC.

Residential development is about 80% of what is missing from the downtown right now. Conveniently, there's also solid demand for new housing so these projects get built while the office proposals gather dust. I believe that the downtown would be doing great if it had another 10,000 people or so and the city spent a moderate amount of generally cleaning up the area. Public projects like a new library are also a good way to improve the area and encourage more people to move there.