(04-04-2024, 02:14 PM)ac3r Wrote: They built a brand new office across from the LCBO downtown and only one tenant moved in over the course of a year (not including the bank). It's more a problem of nobody wanting to move in.
Some of that is also a policy problem. One of the main reasons that buildings like that struggle to attract tenants is that parking is paid, while the competition (suburbia) offers free parking. We don't have to allow suburban office parks to be built. Calgary didn't have to end up with a big dense downtown, most cities built in their era didn't, but they restricted suburban office development and downtown parking construction while building out an LRT. The end result was very high LRT ridership and a dense downtown. We've built our LRT, we just need to make the planning choices that support it.
Obviously right now all office space is struggling to find tenants, downtown and suburban. But we've known the LRT was coming for more than a decade, why in the 2010s were we allowing the construction of new suburban office parks?
The suburban office parks all seem to be in Waterloo, so I think the answer relates to the City of Waterloo wanting uptown to have a "small town feel", but also wanting the tax revenue of office development. Pushing office development to Kitchener wouldn't have been an acceptable option, because then the city wouldn't get the tax revenue. I'm not sure how I feel about amalgamation overall, but I think this situation is one point in favour.