Downtown Ottawa Revitalization Initiatives

[Richard Eade]

I think that lrt’s friend is talking much more broadly that you are giving him credit for. He is not only taking about the post-CoViD issue.

Cities develop and change over time, as they grow. When small, a lot of essential services are located in the core. That is THE place to do everything that is located on the High Street. As the city grows, more people occupy the outer reaches, mostly because housing prices are lower out there. Living in the core of the city is more expensive because everything is at their finger-tips.

Once enough people live away from the core, businesses begin to locate further out, to catch those potential clients. Sometimes, these are branches of the main location, which remains in the core; sometimes the remote location becomes the main location, and the core is abandoned. This is especially true if the core has not developed enough residents.

Thus, the centrally situated High Street jewelry store used to be the place people traveled to to buy a ring – because it was the only jewelry store in town. Once a store opened closer to the suburbs, people could save the trip downtown and buy their rings closer to their home. As fewer people ventured into the core, the downtown store had to rely almost exclusively on local (downtown) residents. If there were not enough of those to cover the high rent, the store closed and the downtown residents traveled to the suburbs for jewelry.

There is nothing unusual about Ottawa’s downtown changing. It has become primarily a business location, with most of the unique reasons to go there – apart from work – removed to the suburbs. There was no longer a need to head down to the Elgin Theater, for instance, since a suburbanite could see the same movie – granted, on a smaller screen – at the new multi-plex theater in their local suburban mall. And the multi-plex format allows several different films to attract customers. The huge ‘Big Elgin’ had to attract hundreds of customers for a single movie.

People still travel to the core for the unique things that are there. The NAC still draws in suburbanites, for example. But there really needs to be an excellent reason for suburbanites to go downtown. And there are still not enough local residents to support a lot of other offerings in the core. There is only one local mall downtown. And the grocery stores were clustered near the highest ‘captive’ population; the university.

Things are changing in downtown Ottawa, however. More residential units are being developed. Gradually, grocery stores, hardware stores, and movie theaters will return. It just won’t happen overnight. And there is little that anyone can do to speed things up. (Well, maybe governments could make it easier and cheaper to house people downtown.)