Workers returning to offices as COVID-19 restrictions lift have meant foot traffic in Western Canada’s largest downtowns is picking up, bringing much needed vitality back to core neighbourhoods.
Business groups in Vancouver, Edmonton and Calgary hope that, along with the office workers, everyone who once went downtown for shopping, entertainment and restaurants will be lured back to the rejuvenated city centres. Heightened foot traffic also means a reduction in some of the crime that had set in during the pandemic as businesses closed and windows were boarded up.
According to new data from commercial real estate company Avison Young for the week that ended on April 17, Edmonton had the second-highest downtown foot traffic in North America, with Calgary in fifth place. The return of the season’s first cruise ship helped Vancouver record the sixth-highest rate of foot traffic in North America.
Avison Young collected the data by analyzing anonymous cell phone data collected from downtown locations.
Puneeta McBryan, executive director of the Edmonton Downtown Business Association, said the feeling in the city has already changed dramatically.
“Our downtown during 2020 and most of 2021 was painfully quiet. … It was bleak for quite a while there,” Ms. McBryan said.
“Already the feeling, just seeing people run into each other again, and seeing restaurants full again at lunchtime, seeing new restaurants open [is exciting].”
Alberta lifted its work-from-home requirements on March 1, and removed capacity limits on all large venues.
Thom Mahler, director of downtown strategy at the City of Calgary, returned to his downtown office after two years working from home.
“I would call it like a bit of an awakening. It’s probably the term I would use. You see restaurants coming back to life, you see more people on the train,” Mr. Mahler said.
He added that one of the city’s priorities is changing the perception, both locally and across the country, that Calgary’s downtown is dying.
“We’re going to have a storyline of renewal and growth as opposed to the previous few years, [when] we’ve really been talking a lot about the vacancy rate and the drop in property values and the impacts of the pandemic,” Mr. Mahler said.
Avison Young’s data show the average weekday visitor volume in Vancouver during the seven-day period in April was at its highest peak for 2022, although that is still well below pre-pandemic levels.
Nolan Marshall, the president and CEO of the Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association, said the numbers are great for businesses in the city’s downtown.
“We’ve been through an unprecedented two years where people predicted the worst, and we were able to demonstrate our resiliency,” Mr. Marshall said. “For us, the increase in foot traffic really is a lifeline for these businesses that have been struggling during the pandemic.”
Last month, the City of Vancouver announced plans to spend almost a half a million dollars on initiatives aimed at tackling homelessness, poverty and mental health in three central city neighbourhoods.
Police statistics show crime patterns in Vancouver, as in many other cities, from Barcelona to Brisbane, have changed dramatically during COVID-19. Incidents of theft from vehicles in 2021 were less than half of the 16,400 in 2019, and break-and-enters and thefts under $5,000 were also dramatically down.
But assaults increased by 108 from the 4,500 the city had overall in 2019, and the number of weapons charges in the West End doubled from the 21 recorded in 2019.
Vancouver councillor Sarah Kirby-Yung said news of increased foot traffic is significant.
“It’s a great thing in terms of public safety of having more, sort of, eyes on the street and just having more people out and about,” Ms. Kirby-Yung said.
Calgary closed some transit stations in January in an effort to encourage homeless people who had been using them as shelters to move to more appropriate accommodations.
Terry Wong, a Calgary city councillor for the ward that includes downtown, said it’s important to increase people’s confidence that the city centre is healthy, clean and safe.
“The return to work will bring back the type of socialization that people experience whether it be in the office or going to restaurants and other forms of social gathering,” Mr. Wong said.
Added Ms. McBryan: “The prediction has been that when you get back to that critical mass of people being around, that’s what makes people feel safe. There’s people around, you feel supported, you don’t feel alone.”
But Avison Young notes that while the foot traffic increases are a positive indicator, a return to pre-pandemic conditions is a way off, and downtown activity may never be the same.
Calgary’s shrinking vacancy rate is good news for a city where the number of empty offices tends to be above average, a second report from Avison Young said, but the agency warns that occupancy in downtown Calgary remains far below the level of two years ago, at the outset of the pandemic.
“We have to face the reality that the Calgary office market (downtown in particular) is dominated by oil and gas companies, and while the traditional energy sector is as healthy as it has been in a long time, the change in the sector has not been fully absorbed by the downtown office market,” the report notes. “In particular, the larger multinational entities will likely be carrying a much smaller occupier footprint than they have historically.”
Sheila Botting, Avison Young’s president of professional services for the Americas, noted that the pandemic only accelerated changes in workers’ office habits that had already begun.
“COVID essentially represented the largest change management activity across the globe,” she writes in the agency’s introduction to its new vitality index.
“We need downtowns. We need offices without a doubt, that does not go away,” Ms. Botting said. “But the scale and purpose of these offices does change. It’s going to scale up or scale down for any organization based on business purpose, culture, how people work and, ultimately, the role of the office.”
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