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General Urban Kitchener Updates and Rumours
Well there's a 36% vacancy rate downtown. The rents are insanely high, the entire place is a dump due to...you know who, inflation is hitting people still and much more, so it's pretty hard to attract new businesses (and retain the new ones that do open). I wish luck to this restaurant, but won't be surprised if they fail.
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(01-10-2023, 12:50 PM)ac3r Wrote: Well there's a 36% vacancy rate downtown. The rents are insanely high, the entire place is a dump due to...you know who, inflation is hitting people still and much more, so it's pretty hard to attract new businesses (and retain the new ones that do open). I wish luck to this restaurant, but won't be surprised if they fail.

I don't think that DTK is a dump and I don't know who you are referring to for being responsible.
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Really? Well I'm referring to the very high vacancies, high rents pushing everyone normal out (both businesses and people who just can't afford to live down there now), the high crime rates, the petty crime like property theft and robberies of stores (either for goods or money), the literal shanty towns we have all over the place, the strung out drug addicts the police seem to refuse to do anything about (if I started to fight people while drunk or high, then took someone's bike to steal from the LCBO I would expect to get arrested), the overdoses, the hazardous used needles and human waste all over the place and the Marxist-Leninst protest movement that has convinced unfortunate homeless people to camp out there so Julian Ichim can LARP as a revolutionary. You can go down there and find him literally helping people smoke fentanyl in the gazebo. I'm not even kidding. There's a picture of him doing it in The Record. This is of course only scratching the surface of things. I guess I should add the street kids that are being groomed by adult street people, who have now been found to be sexually trafficking them and providing them with drugs.

Maybe you see these things in a different light than I do, but to me any many others, it has ruined our downtown that was otherwise on the right track to having a comeback after the dreadful 1990s. It is the 1990s again, only worse because back then people didn't use fentanyl. This is not an environment a lot of people want to be in...whether it's to go for a walk, rent a business or buy a home.
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I live downtown and walk around downtown every day in both the afternoon and evening and have never once seen any of the things you mentioned apart from "high rents", lmao. Sure, downtown doesn't have a whole lot going on, but it's certainly not full of "high crime", "petty theft", "robberies", "strung out drug addicts", people starting fights, "hazardous used needles", and
"human waste". Where are you getting all this, man?
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(01-10-2023, 01:47 PM)Acitta Wrote:
(01-10-2023, 12:50 PM)ac3r Wrote: Well there's a 36% vacancy rate downtown. The rents are insanely high, the entire place is a dump due to...you know who, inflation is hitting people still and much more, so it's pretty hard to attract new businesses (and retain the new ones that do open). I wish luck to this restaurant, but won't be surprised if they fail.

I don't think that DTK is a dump and I don't know who you are referring to for being responsible.

I agree with Acitta. It's very much not a dump, and we have far more people and businesses here than before. There is no question that many people do want to live downtown, hence the rents (and house prices) are relatively higher downtown than further away. Some people certainly don't want to live downtown, but that's OK, too.

That's not to say that we don't have issues to work on, but I'm cautiously optimistic that the regional and city councils are (albeit ever so slowly) moving in the right direction on these.
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(01-10-2023, 06:16 PM)tomh009 Wrote:
(01-10-2023, 01:47 PM)Acitta Wrote: I don't think that DTK is a dump and I don't know who you are referring to for being responsible.

I agree with Acitta. It's very much not a dump, and we have far more people and businesses here than before. There is no question that many people do want to live downtown, hence the rents (and house prices) are relatively higher downtown than further away. Some people certainly don't want to live downtown, but that's OK, too.

That's not to say that we don't have issues to work on, but I'm cautiously optimistic that the regional and city councils are (albeit ever so slowly) moving in the right direction on these.

It will be interesting to see how DTK copes with the high tech downturn, WFH, and the coming (probably) recession.  At a minimum, I would expect the pace of change to slow down for several years.
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I live pretty close to downtown and I see people out and about all the time. I walked and drove by the ice rink at City Hall frequently over the holidays and not once was it empty. Usually it was full-ish of families with kids, as well as uni and college students. I saw the same at the Pop-Up Park this summer as well as for other events on Gaukel and around the core.

There's a whole thread on this forum full of legit things DTK needs to do to become more vibrant and alive, but to say it is entirely "a dump" that no one wants to live in or visit is clearly not true. Conestoga College is expanding their downtown campus, there's a new condo or apartment building going up on pretty much every downtown block, not to mention the the well attended festivals, markets, and events that run there every weekend from June-November. 

IMO Repeating the false narrative that the streets of DTK is brimming with crime, addicts, violence, and drugs only serves to contribute to suburbanized mentality of people in the Region, making them fear taking transit and rally against proposed housing developments. This narrative is not accurate and it's def not helpful.
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(01-10-2023, 02:06 PM)ac3r Wrote: Really? Well I'm referring to the very high vacancies, high rents pushing everyone normal out (both businesses and people who just can't afford to live down there now), the high crime rates, the petty crime like property theft and robberies of stores (either for goods or money), the literal shanty towns we have all over the place, the strung out drug addicts the police seem to refuse to do anything about (if I started to fight people while drunk or high, then took someone's bike to steal from the LCBO I would expect to get arrested), the overdoses, the hazardous used needles and human waste all over the place and the Marxist-Leninst protest movement that has convinced unfortunate homeless people to camp out there so Julian Ichim can LARP as a revolutionary. You can go down there and find him literally helping people smoke fentanyl in the gazebo. I'm not even kidding. There's a picture of him doing it in The Record. This is of course only scratching the surface of things. I guess I should add the street kids that are being groomed by adult street people, who have now been found to be sexually trafficking them and providing them with drugs.

Maybe you see these things in a different light than I do, but to me any many others, it has ruined our downtown that was otherwise on the right track to having a comeback after the dreadful 1990s. It is the 1990s again, only worse because back then people didn't use fentanyl. This is not an environment a lot of people want to be in...whether it's to go for a walk, rent a business or buy a home.

This is an extremely offensive amount of stereotypes and misinformation. Do you spend any time in Kitchener? Do you live downtown?

I have lived by the Kitchener Market for a decade. Before that I was in the Mansion Lofts. I grew up here, I went to Cameron. I've seen every iteration of DTK. Even with the changes since COVID it's still better than it was when I went to high school.

The issue with downtown right now is that office work has left for good, which is creating vacancies in office buildings and that means downtown doesn't have much more than residents and people who come downtown for a purpose like dinner. To fix it, much of the office space should be converted to residential – offices aren't coming back, particularly not when downtown employers were mostly knowledge workers where remote-first is the new normal. Flex space might be around but most of the office buildings are going to be empty.

The homeless issue needs to be resolved but it's not unique to Kitchener, every city is struggling with it right now. Every city is also struggling with balancing policing with mental health support. There are no easy answers to the problem, but dehumanizing people who need help doesn't help anybody. What is your proposed solution to the homeless problem? Bulldoze people out of the city? Where do they go, to another city to be someone else's problem?

There is not human excrement or needles "all over the place" – I walk downtown every day. I don't have a car, so I walk for my groceries, pharmacy, everything I need. I can't recall a single instance I've seen that. Are you confusing Kitchener for San Francisco? I again ask if you have even spent any time in DTK recently.

Downtown has more new, better restaurants and better coffee shops than ever before. It has new stores. It has a good community. It also has problems like every downtown in North America has right now.

Lastly, none of your arguments – "go for a walk, rent a business or buy a home." King St is full of people walking every day. Starbucks just re-opened. Rose Cafe. The Pulao Gals. Humble Lotus. The new Portuguese chicken place. Eby Bodega. Lucero. Goldie's. Talula Fields. KWFamous. All of these businesses opened in the past year, in the downtown you claim no one wants to rent a business. Have you seen home prices? They're still high.

I like this forum to understand the developments in this city, but the level of elitism and dehumanization that is allowed to happen here is disgusting.
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Yeah, I Iived and worked in DTK for four years and I do not understand the "there are dirty needles everywhere" rhetoric. In four years, I saw a grand total of...two used syringes--in FOUR years--and I lived next to the bus terminal.

I agree with Attica and the rest of the folks here. My experience does not match the fearmongering I hear constantly.
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As someone involved in actually physically building this city and from the political negotiations and socioeconomic issues and more that are involved in my field, I see all sides of it and I have a lot of information that you guys don't see until it hits The Record (if it ever does). This is information we need to know when proposing and designing new projects for this region. There is a lot broken here, but you aren't really going to see it on your way to work and back or from the LRT to some restaurant. My partner who works in emergency services is also very much aware of it, keenly aware of things on the ground much more than I (where I rely on statistics and raw data). She can tell you which houses are known to hold drug caches, who is a sex worker, where people throw away their sharps containers of needles (go dredge the "lake" in Victoria Park), where your stolen bikes and property are, where the last overdose was, where the street kids do things for their drugs (because they don't exactly have money). It's really not hard to find, so either you aren't looking or you are woefully ignorant of what is going on.

This isn't the worst city there is, but it is also not the best. There is a wide culmination of issues at the moment and it is really giving downtown Kitchener a bad image once again. As I said, downtown was a void in the 90s and then it sprung back, only to fall flat on its face once again. The residents of this city don't want this...they want a downtown they can go to without having to worry whether their bike is going to still be there when they're done at the park or wonder how many times they'll be asked for spare change and cigarettes. And business owners don't want to have to worry about their products being stolen each single day.

You can disagree if you want or dislike my choice of the word dump, but believe me, it doesn't change the actual reality out there. Obviously the post-pandemic period we're in right now is impacting things as is inflation, but there are a lot of other factors at play here particularly relating to criminal behaviours.
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If it can be boiled down a bit too much probably, there's a lot of mediocrity here that is just accepted for a lot of reasons - but things could be a lot better. We don't have to compare ourselves to Detroit when we say that things could be better.

Bleeding hearts, tax cheapskates, carbrains, heartless suburbanites, the whole spectrum is here. I think a lot of bad things have been covered up by relative prosperity and "boom times" that will be much more difficult to deal with now that resources are constrained. There's a middle ground between bulldozing tents in winter and ceding all public land to squatters and we need a lot better leadership than we have now to find it.

I also think that there is a point where feedback and engagement really is counter-productive, we need some courage and conviction from whoever makes the plans.
local cambridge weirdo
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(01-11-2023, 07:03 PM)bravado Wrote: If it can be boiled down a bit too much probably, there's a lot of mediocrity here that is just accepted for a lot of reasons - but things could be a lot better. We don't have to compare ourselves to Detroit when we say that things could be better.

Bleeding hearts, tax cheapskates, carbrains, heartless suburbanites, the whole spectrum is here. I think a lot of bad things have been covered up by relative prosperity and "boom times" that will be much more difficult to deal with now that resources are constrained. There's a middle ground between bulldozing tents in winter and ceding all public land to squatters and we need a lot better leadership than we have now to find it.

I also think that there is a point where feedback and engagement really is counter-productive, we need some courage and conviction from whoever makes the plans.

This is on point. We need leadership. Public engagement is not inherently bad, but it is not a solution nor a substitute for leadership, and frankly, the way we do it, you might as well call it wealth engagement...it isn't the public.
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(01-11-2023, 01:20 AM)Marko Wrote: Downtown has more new, better restaurants and better coffee shops than ever before. It has new stores. It has a good community. It also has problems like every downtown in North America has right now.

This. Downtown is not perfect, and no one is saying it is. It has issues common with many other cities in Canada and worldwide (homelessness, work from home). And yet it's generally a safe, clean and attractive place to live, play (and work!) for many, many people. Still, we do need to work together to continue to make it better.

P.S. Our software development team is back to working in our office downtown, albeit in hybrid mode (three days per week) so at least we are not giving up our office space.
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The record article did state that most of the 34% office  vacancy are units in new builds or that require full fit out and renovation. These units are ones that require a lot of investment. The smaller units and move in ready spaces have a much lower vacancy rate. Once the economy settles down and the new normal finally has been determined we will likely see the office vacancy change.
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I do hope so. And I hope we find a way to fix the socioeconomic problems on the ground.
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