Edmonton businesses launch $427 million downtown investment plan

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A group of Edmonton business and Downtown organizations have targeted 19 investments totalling nearly a half-billion dollars to improve Edmonton’s core.

“We don’t get what we don’t ask for,” said Jason Syvixay, vice-president of strategy and operations for BILD Edmonton Metro.

On Wednesday, BILD Edmonton Metro; the Downtown Revitalization Coalition; the Edmonton Chamber of Commerce; the Edmonton Downtown Business Association; NAIOP Edmonton and BOMA Edmonton all released a joint Downtown Investment Plan document. The plan was co-authored by Syvixay and Alexandra Hryciw, the chairwoman of the Downtown Revitalization Coalition, with the goal of summarizing where Downtown investment ought to go that all the business community could agree on.

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Through data analysis, policy review, stakeholder and community engagement, the document suggests 19 investments totaling $427 million divided into short, medium, and long-term projects to improve Edmonton’s Downtown.

The short-term projects include expanding the city’s cleanliness initiative ($3 million), supporting a downtown attainable housing fund ($100 million), and a neighbourhood downtown renewal program ($30 million over three years), among several others. The medium and long-term projects include revitalizing the city’s downtown LRT entrances ($25 million) and exploring a direct rail connection from the Edmonton International Airport to Downtown ($25 million).

The plan begins with the premise that Edmonton’s Downtown is under-performing, which the document’s data shows. According to Syvixay, downtowns in major cities often take up a smaller geographical space while contributing disproportionately higher economic output. However, their research showed that while Edmonton’s downtown core used to account for 10 per cent of the municipal tax base, it has been reduced to just 6.4 per cent in 2024.

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Hryciw described the change as “shocking.”

“It’s also shocking that we don’t have these numbers at our fingertips, and we’re not talking about this more often,” said Hryciw.

She said the lack of consistent economic data from the city’s downtown region is an issue and hoped to spur a change going forward that ensures more consistent economic data.

While there’s no shortage of problems in Edmonton’s Downtown — whether it’s homelessness, lack of density, or office vacancy — Syvixay said the city has actually shown remarkable foresight in the amount of planning it has in the Downtown area. He said the city had more than 10 different planning documents that were created over the last nearly 30 years.

“I like planning, but I also don’t want us to be a city that gets paralyzed by planning processes,” said Syvixay.

“We have a lot of great tools. We just need an actual funding mechanism and a co-ordinated ask.”

Ensuring that the plan had properly co-ordinated its investment projects, the Chamber of Commerce engaged its affiliated businesses to hear what their priorities are. Despite many of the businesses operating outside of the core, Heather Thomson, the chamber’s vice-president of strategy, research and engagement, said businesses have supported downtown revitalization efforts.

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“I was really impressed and surprised by how there wasn’t a lot of conflicting demands or investment asks,” said Thomson.

NAIOP Edmonton CEO, Anand Pye, said that he feels the power of the plan lies in the amount of people supporting it and its simplicity. With the backing of much of the city’s business community, he said the plan can help distill the requests down into a series of boxes that can be systematically ticked off, with guaranteed support, while working towards a unified goal.

“We’ll actually be able to seize those opportunities, because we’ve been able to corral all of our different groups together to be on the same page,” said Syvixay.

The plan’s authors said they worked at the “pace of industry,” completing it between June and September. Hryciw said that speed is important in both planning and investment.

“The more time we wait on coming up with a perfect plan or coming up with a 100 per cent perfect strategy, we’re losing that money,” said Hryciw.

“We have to be hyper-conscious of, as a city, every time somebody comes into town for the rodeo or an Oilers game, or to take in a show at the Winspear, that’s a potential investor.”

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Of the many asks that the plan put forward, Pye, Syvixay, Thomson, and Hryciw all seemed optimistic at the prospects of getting funding for better cleanliness in the core.

“We already have funding for it and just expanding it seems like a relatively low lift in terms of what the ask is, as well as the actual impact for the community,” said Thomson

Hryciw compared it to cleaning a house.

“Investors look at your downtown as though it’s kind of the living room of your house, and you should always clean that up first and let them explore the rest of the house when they have time,” she said with a laugh.

The document also highlights a need to densify the downtown core by adding more housing. With NorQuest College and MacEwan University adding more than 30,000 people to the region, there’s an increasing need to house people Downtown.

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