The danger of downtown decline

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The Globe and Mail Centre on King Street East commands magnificent views of Toronto’s downtown. Soaring towers scrape the sky to the west. Construction cranes work busily on building more. Cars stream along the elevated Gardiner Expressway and red-and-white streetcars glide along King.

Looking out on it all this week I couldn’t help wondering, is it over? Is the generation-long boom that has transformed downtown coming to an end?

It is easy to think so these days. The streets are still not nearly as busy as they were before the pandemic. The workers who used to fill all those office towers are resisting giving up their cozy work-from-home routines. The office vacancy rate reached 16 per cent last year, quadruple the figure before COVID-19 hit.

Shopify, the e-commerce firm, has decided it won’t move into The Well, a massive new development on the site of the former Globe building in the west side of downtown. That meant abandoning no less than 348,103 square feet of space. The Globe reports that the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce is looking to sublet another 400,000 square feet in five downtown buildings.

With fewer people coming into the office, fewer are riding the TTC, the city’s once-thriving transit system. Ridership is still only about two-thirds of prepandemic levels. The agency is running ads to encourage commuters to come back to its buses, streetcars and subways, but a spate of violent crimes on the TTC has made some regulars reluctant to return.

You don’t have to be an alarmist to imagine how a vicious circle could develop. With fewer people coming downtown, the restaurants, bars, convenience stores and fitness clubs that depend on their business start to fail. That lessens the lure of downtown. With fewer people riding the TTC, the agency cuts services and raises fares (it’s already started). That makes it harder to get downtown and still less attractive to get on the bus.

Big companies relocate to the suburbs. The city’s tax take from downtown businesses and developments falls. With less money in hand, the city lets the services that keep the downtown in safe and working order decline.

It has happened before. Cities around North America suffered from a mass exodus in the post-war decades as business and residents streamed to the suburbs. Toronto’s downtown fared better than many, but it was still a rather dull and lifeless place, with huge surface parking lots sucking the life out of its streets and not much to do after dark.

All that changed over the past couple of decades. Tens of thousands of people streamed back into the core. Soaring condo towers rose to accommodate them. Businesses poured in, too, first filling renovated brick-and-beam buildings then a host of new office towers. In the five years after 2016 alone, the downtown population grew 16 per cent. More than a quarter of million people now live there.

Other parts of Greater Toronto also grew by leaps, as places like North York and Brampton took in throngs of new immigrants. But downtown is the city’s beating heart. Toronto’s success relies on it. It’s part of the city’s brand, showcased in big events like the Toronto Raptors championship in 2019.

What a calamity it would be to see it all crumble. Toronto’s leaders should do everything in their power to prevent that from happening.

They should resist cutting TTC service, even if the streetcars run half empty for a while. They should make sure taxes for downtown businesses are fair. They should cut the red tape that sometimes hampers building projects. They should see to it that the streets are well policed. They should beat the drum wherever possible for the merits of a busy, vital core.

Toronto’s downtown is one of its greatest glories. Even now, looking out from The Globe building at all those glittering towers, you can feel the energy that comes from having so many people living and working and playing side by side.

Let’s make sure we keep downtown humming.