How would you make downtown London a better place?
 

I am just wondering what people's ideas are for improving downtown London. I think we can all agree that the presence of drugs and homelessness are not great for the city, but beyond fixing those issues London still needs to improve and attract people downtown.

The Canada Life Centre is something that brings a lot of people downtown several nights of the year but I think we need an attraction (or two) that make downtown a destination throughout the year. I know that Chattanooga, Tennessee built (at the time) the largest aquarium in the world and it radically changed their downtown because they had thousands of people come to visit every day. It was so successful that they expanded it (it was already large). Atlanta (2 hours drive away) saw it's success and decided to build a larger aquarium but the one in Chattanooga is still successful. What could London build to attract people? Or what other ideas do you have? It seems our city hall has no actual ideas.

Yes.


This has been the case for many portions, of the past decades. 1 step forward, 2 sideways, and one through the floor for some reason.

Honestly, it felt like they were on the right track in the late 90's, starting with the new market and then getting the arena across the road. The 80's were the problem though with allowing Galleria to happen and I don't think there is much they can do to counteract how that killed street level retail. I don't think the library going in there really helped Dundas St. I almost feel like that spot would have been better for the arena but that would have been brutally expensive to demolish that entire side of the mall to do the arena. Then the Talbot block could have become a new civic square with city hall and library, the market across the street one way, the museum and old courthouse across the other way leading in to the forks.

I think the biggest thing killing downtown now is that god awful Dundas and Richmond corner. Complete dead zone. If that entire west side of Richmond disappeared overnight, it would be an instant improvement. Replace the RBC building with a 30s residential tower and finish off the market tower site into a square incorporating Dundas Place, maybe a summer outdoor performance area with the street festivals or something, and opening up that corner to the Market.

The last 15 years of residential development downtown is impressive but I don't know what the sweet spot is for how many people to get living down there to build it back up as the vibrant place it was 50+ years ago. Would having every single proposal getting built make a difference? There are lots of densely built downtowns across the continent that suck. People are different now, they stay in at night more than back then. So maybe 10,000 more people living downtown isn't noticed because they are all in their apartments after 6pm.

One thing I wish had come about from those late 90's discussions was the mega movie complex (AMC I believe it was talked about back then). 24 plex on that property north side of Queen west of Talbot. I agree with OP that some kind of actual tourist draw downtown would be great, but I can't really come up with something off the top of my head. A Ripleys Aquarium type idea is as good as any though.

1) do something about the excessive number of homeless and junkies. I am very sympathetic to their plight, but their presence is the single biggest reason why people avoid downtown.
2) get rid of Farhi and his "buy-hold-deteriorate-parking" strategy. So many vacant buildings (I mean, WTF is going on with Market Tower??), all fronted by this rapacious guy in the ugly beret.
3) stop endlessly zoning more retail and office space on the periphery of the city.
4) LRT hub, with two lines: (a) Masonville-Western-Downtown-White Oaks (North-South) and (b) Oakridge-Wonderland-Downtown-Highbury-Airport (West-East).

Time for London to put on its "big boy pants" and stop acting like it was Strathroy.

I lived in Montreal in the 70s-80s-90s. Those were terrifically tough times for that city, with the triple whammy of De-industrialization, political strife (which throttled investment), and stagflation. Yet the downtown core remained suprisingly vibrant. Compare that with Detroit or Cleveland (yes, these places were wracked by white flight, but they also didn't have to suffer two referendums on independence). One major reason was the impressive rapid transit system of Montreal, centred on the downtown core. Detroit had nothing of the sort (and even today, only has a pathetic "people mover").

Nobody wants to eat an apple with a rotten core.

Grand Rapids, the city that London modelled it's arena after is looking at building an aquarium, has just completed building a new 12,000 outdoor amphitheatre, and is also currently building a 8500 seat soccer stadium for a 2nd division MLS team. They also have a zoo, a botanical gardens, and several other attractions. They could use the same excuse that London uses (we are too close to Toronto) as they are close to Detroit and Chicago, but instead they seem to have ambition. The city itself has a population of 200,000 and a metro of 1 million. That metro is bigger than London, but it can be argued that London has a catchment area of over 1 million.

We don't have an aquarium, nor a large amphitheatre, nor a soccer stadium. We also don't have a zoo.

Botanical gardens? Surely that one on Springbank doesn't count. Other attractions...well, there is Storybook Gardens (doesn't have stories, nor much else for that matter), and....well, there's Fanshawe Pioneer Village (which I like, but c'mon). Springbank Park?

"London is a nice place to live, but I wouldn't want to visit there."

I’m in san Diego right now and they have a great downtown. One thing of note is that I’ve seen very few large surface level parking lots (like London has) and a lot of mid-rise residential (5-8 floors). Most of those buildings have pleasant street level retail/restaurants. I’d be very happy to see London fill in the parking lots with mid-rise. I like tall buildings but prefer a uniform street level experience. Even a lot of downtown Toronto has soulless set back towers that don’t engage people at street level. I’m sure places like Quebec City, Victoria and Halifax are much better at this.

ui
 

LOL! Grand Rapids! Having been thru GR a number of times and even stayed overnight once, I was not aware of their world famous aquarium, soccer field, amphitheater and zoo. Quite the tourist traps those are. :cool:

But seriously downtown core needs to continue to add residential heads in pillows. A couple of hundred more units will be opening in the spring then we will likely see a pause while we wait on Halloway Holdings 35s to be completed in early 2029 and hopefully Fritzrovia's 35s around the same time. The SOHO units have already started opening and the remainder should be completed by 2027.

The unknown question right now is will there be demand for these or will we see alot of 2 free months rent promotions etc etc because tenants are not interested in $2000 plus a month units.

Downtown needs thousands of additional residents to drive foot traffic and bring back commercial, retail and service businesses. That will help push back on the rampant vagrants and drug addicts making it a no go zone and no tolerance law enforcement of illegal activities.

So if you read my post you’d find out that they are just finishing building the 12,000 seat concert amphitheatre, currently building the 8500 seat soccer stadium for an MLS 2 team and considering the aquarium. I guess they don’t exist if you didn’t notice them? The fact is they are doing something to improve their city and London has looked to GR as a model before.

Amphitheatre
https://meetingsmags.com/michigan/mi_news/grand-rapids-amphitheater-on-track-for-2026/

Stadium
https://www.grandaction.org/current-projects/amway-stadium

Aquarium
https://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/...-waterfront-aquarium.html?outputType=amp

Having more residential downtown is great but it’s not everything. Tourism and conventions are big business and support restaurants, retail, hotels and a healthy downtown.

So soccer stadium is budgeted at $175M US. Looking for $115M public funding and $60M private donations.

Not there yet...
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The Aquarium project’s price tag isn’t finalized, but early estimates indicate it could cost anywhere from $370 million to $390 million.

“We’re hoping to open in 2031 if everything stays on track,” said D’Arienzo, who has led John Ball Zoo since 2016.

The aquarium, along with Acrisure Amphitheater and Amway Stadium, was highlighted by Destination Kent as a potential beneficiary of the successful 2024 ballot measure to raise Kent County’s hotel tax from 5% to 8% to help fund tourism-oriented projects.

However, the zoo hasn’t requested those funds at this time, and the county board of commissioners has final say over how they’re used.

Zoo is a non profit owned by the county.


Good luck to them....

I’m not sure of you’re point…

The soccer stadium is under construction. The amphitheatre is under construction. The city is actually building attractions that will help their economy. Please name me the major attractions that London has or is under construction. I will say 100 Kellogg is a major attraction and I’m glad for the group that is pushing forward with their plans. But to improve our downtown, radical plans are needed and I think the city has a role to play. It’s not just about more residential. There are residential buildings everywhere in London. We need attractions to bring people downtown to spend money. Do you oppose that??

San Diego’s downtown was heavily revitalized by the move of the Padres’ ballpark from the suburbs to downtown in 2004. I’ve read their downtown was really sketchy before that.

I’ve been there and was quite impressed with the downtown, it’s quite clean as well. There is homelessness there but it was much less than other US cities I’ve been to, or Vancouver.

If private cash is interested in building and operating attractions in London we should welcome it with open arms and smiles.

I actually kind of oppose that. For decades cities everywhere have been racking their brains trying to invent ways to entice suburban folks downtown, and it rarely ever works. The days of our downtown being the only big shopping, retail, and entertainment destination in town are unfortunately just kinda over. Sure you might get a family piling into their SUV for a dinner and a Knights game once or twice a year, but how much is that actually benefiting downtown? They park for a few hours, sit down for a meal somewhere, enjoy the game, and they're gone for another 6 months.

I'm mostly opposed to big, risky revitalization projects. They might make for good headlines and photo ops for politicians, but for every successful revitalization project there are probably just as many failed or floundering ones. Why does ambition have to manifest itself as a big grandiose project like an aquarium for you to be happy? I can't see an aquarium being any more successful at bringing people downtown than Canada Life Place. Once a year a family makes a trip downtown to park their SUV, grab lunch, and visit the aquarium. It just feels like an outdated 60s-era urban renewal tactic. Like dropping a few hundred million dollars on one big project will be the silver bullet that finally solves all of downtown's woes.

It seems like focusing on residential downtown is not an exciting enough answer for you, but in my eyes that's our best bet for fixing our downtown. For 15 years I've lived and worked downtown. I spend almost all of my time and money downtown. I feel safe assuming that I alone am putting way more money back into the downtown economy than that entire suburban family I mentioned in my first paragraph.

Again, this might not be an exciting answer, but I'm in favour of a more organic approach. Incentivize residential and infill in general. Improve infrastructure so it can support more density downtown. Focus on improving the pedestrian experience downtown. Grants to improve storefronts, facades, lighting, signage, etc. Invest in one or two strategic parking garages (reasonably priced but paid parking) and incentivize (or force) surface parking lots to close and redevelop. Continue programming and activating our parks in the summer, maybe invest more money into The Forks to create a third large downtown space that can be activated with festivals/markets. Explore ways to strengthen connections between downtown and its neighbours. Like maybe reopen Waterloo Street at the tracks, or add a pedestrian bridge at Clarence and the tracks. Focus on dead corners of downtown like Waterloo and King (and all of York Street), and explore options for facilitating growth in massively underutilized areas.

Continue focusing on building downtown into a healthy neighbourhood, where people live, work, play, eat, shop, etc. And then the suburbanites will visit our downtown when our downtown is worth visiting.

So to jammer's point, we actually do have money for investing in tourism projects. There is a hotel tax that is charged and it was that tax that funded the $25 million + for Canada Life Centre upgrades. So the taxpayers of London did not spend any extra money for that.

With regards to your points bolognium, I am all for more residential as I stated in my first post. But residential is not the entire puzzle solved, just a piece of the puzzle to create a healthy downtown.

With regards to the aquarium that Chattanooga built (and many other cities too long to list), the facts speak for themselves. It draws 700,000 paid visitors a year and has had over 20,000,000 visitors to date. A lot of those visitors stay overnight at hotels, spend money at restaurants, etc. I know this because my family actually went there, stayed over and ate out there. It's not about "making me happy", but rather it is understanding the advantage London has being located halfway between two major metros and within driving distance of several millions of people.

I don't think I suggested axing any other improvements downtown at the expense of building a nice attraction. The fact is that having a good attraction causes businesses to want to be downtown and they will actually pay for their own improvements.

Since the Chattanooga Aquarium was built, it has had over $5 billion of investment in downtown Chattanooga. See the article below. The aquarium WAS what drove that investment. I'm not trying to be rude, but do you ever visit other cities? Or do you think London should stay in it's bubble and not look at why other cities are successful and learn how we can be better?

(https://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2017/apr/23/aquarium-attraction25-years-tennessee-aquariu/)

https://dynamic-media-cdn.tripadvisor.co...f-tennessee-aquarium.jpg?w=1200&h=-1&s=1

You said the same thing in your municipal election thread. When I disagreed with you and argued nuances should be acknowledged when comparing London and KW, you resorted to trying to paint me as this bumpkin that's never left lil' old London. Yes I travel and visit other cities, and I know enough to not assume what works in one city will work in every city. You cherry-pick a city with a similar population and just say "Look what City X did! If London had any ambition it would do that too!" Your version of "learning from other cities" seems to be just copying other cities' homework. Your version of ambition seems to be plunking down a giant building or freeway like it's Sim City.

Again this just sounds like any desperate, antiquated urban-renewal scheme from the past. Some work, plenty don't. Might as well skip the aquarium and go straight to building a monorail.

Read the title of the post bolognium. Read what I said. I merely said that Chattanooga found something that has paid off big time and I asked for suggestions what London could do to have success downtown.

The fact that other cities can find creative ways to bring people downtown and as a result see billions worth of investment seems to be something to consider. Josh Morgan and his crew spent that tourism money very quickly and without studying any other ideas how to spend it. To me the status quo is not acceptable.

The rest of London, for the most part, will continue to stay away from downtown unless there are substantial changes made. That is just reality.

I did read the title of the thread and your post, and I replied with how I believe we can improve our downtown.

I just happen to think an aquarium is a stupid idea.

I agree with bolognium, large tourist projects often end up as white elephants and even if they don't, they amount of money spent on one project would be far better spent on a hundred smaller ones. You also cannot compare Chattanooga to London because Chat doesn't have an 8.5 million city just 2 hours away. Ottawa, Victoria, and Halifax are also not fair comparisons because they are capitol cities with all the gov't largess it entails.

That said there are some concrete actions the City could take beyond getting rid of the junkies and homeless:

1} Bring in VERY VERY heavy fees for leasers who leave street frontage units empty essentially forcing them to rent them out even if they have to drop the rents.
2} Add housing but don't just wait for big developments but also lower rise ones and office to residential conversion, which admittedly London is already doing quite successfully.
3} The City should encourage people to come downtown by making it cheaper to do so. They set up a system like "downtown dollars" where if they spend more, for example, than $75, they get either a free bus ticket or the first 2 hours of their parking at City parking lots free.
4} Mandatory reduction of private parking lots by 50% so the landlords {ie Farhi} would still have to pay 100% of the current taxes but have 50% less revenue coming in making them want to sell the land to people who actually want to develop it. Note these are parking lots NOT spots that a business may have for it's employees/customers.
5} The City should work with a grocer to bring a grocery store downtown. It wouldn't have to be a large one but just a regular Metro/Zehrs.
6} This is a weird one but one that actually has uniformly proven to work exceptional well..............a dog park. I know downtown has that tiny little one but it's really just an alley. Dog parks ALWAYS increase property values, reduce crime as they are parks that are closed overnight, encourage people to get out and when they do they shop/eat. Many people in smaller living spaces may not have any kids {young people/retirees} but do have a dog. Some dog parks have proven themselves to be "tourist attractions" in their own right and this is especially true in winter when they have large sections that are covered so that even suburbanites will come downtown to let their dog run free. Dog Parks are not only a dog's best friend but have shown consistently they re also a business best friend.

Atlanta’s metro population is almost identical to Torontos.(8.5 million is not a number I’ve seen for Toronto)
Atlanta is 2 hours, 10 minutes to Chattanooga.

And once again I did not say London must build an aquarium. It is my opinion that London could greatly benefit from a major attraction.To me the reasons are obvious but that’s ok if you don’t agree with me.

yes. I was in San Diego in 2004, and there wasn't much downtown (which was still quite sketchy).


Fast forward to 2025, and London's downtown has never been sketchier.

There are some homeless issues in San Diego, but since there are a lot of people walking around it does not seem nearly as bad as London. In London it seems like all the druggies hang out together in groups, but I've just seen a individuals here and there in San Diego. They keep the city very clean too.

We know that drugs and homelessness and drugs but what else do you think the City should do?

Just spent the week in Vancouver and they certainly have homelessness and drug issues like London, but the downtown is very healthy, wall to wall people almost all day long. The city has great street level appeal with lots of cafes, shops, etc. Vancouver has plenty of tall buildings, but it is that street level retail that appeals to people. London does not have the appeal of Vancouver, I know that is obvious, but what I have thought is that London has not had any local rich company or individual that really wants to improve our city. In most of my travels you see more of that. Farhi is the exact opposite of what our city needs. He does not care about the health of the downtown, maybe only related to his own profit. We need individuals, with money, who want to improve downtown because they actually love our city.

Comparing a metro of 3.1 million to one of 600k is a little unfair. Also, Vancouver's drug and homeless population is exponentially worse than London's. The entire Downtown Eastside is nothing but an outdoor homeless shelter and drug emporium. Truly Canada's only urban slum and can compete with any of the worst ones in the US.

As far as improving the downtown, there are several things the city can do to greatly improve the situation with little or no cost and actually become a revenue booster for the City coffers:

1} Phase out all private parking lots. A City cannot tell you what you can do with your property but it can tell you what you can't do with it thru zoning. If a business has parking SPOTS for employees/customer, then they should be able to keep them but for LOTS they should be forced to phase them out over a 5 year period. They can keep the lots if they want but cannot use them for parking but their taxes remain the same.........they become a noose around an owner's financial neck forcing them to sell to people who want to develop the property.
2} Bring in a VERY hefty tax for all street level vacancies again making them lie empty becomes much more expensive than renting them out at a lower price.
3} Offer lower property taxes and lower development permit costs for the downtown area than outside of it, giving new developments a cost advantage of being downtown.
4} Increased police presence day and night and banning ANYONE from sitting/lying on the sidewalks. Contrary to what the poverty industry thinks, people do not have the right to clog a public space or loiter at them.

I would add increasing residential densities by making it easier to build much taller and much higher densities across the entire downtown area which is needlessly restricted now. The recent zoning debates because a property is across the street and is only zoned to 15s while on the other side can be much taller. Truly stupid.

In the end downtown needs thousands of more heads sleeping on pillows every night which translates into foot traffic and commercial/retail activity at street level.