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Downtown

Hopefully that will be more popular and stable for the space.
I hope so. It's been four different venues already since Hundred left, aside from being mostly vacant.

I was concerned when I heard June launch because that sounds impractical, like an inexperienced restauranteur, but we will see. It was a second hand report so maybe just a game of telephone.
 
Renovations are underway in the large McLeod restaurant space. Apparently it will be a steakhouse of some sort. I've been told they are targeting a June opening but if they want to do the renos well I would expect that to slip.
Interesting to hear its another steak space given the recent announcement of Vons moving downtown too. Does this mean we are getting two new steak restaurants downtown this summer or was the previously reported move of Vons to the State and Main space actually here in the McLeod space?
 
It would be a good location for them if they are smart enought to grab it, however they seemed to have a more suburban mentality recently, at least when it comes to Edmonton.
 
They looked at the Canada Permanent Bank Building about 7 yrs ago and had passed due to a variety of things including 'a lack of parking'... yup... and had planned to go into Unity (Oliver) Square, but that fell through with the ownership/organizational changes if I am not mistaken.
 
Interesting to hear its another steak space given the recent announcement of Vons moving downtown too. Does this mean we are getting two new steak restaurants downtown this summer or was the previously reported move of Vons to the State and Main space actually here in the McLeod space?
I hadn't heard Von's was coming downtown and can't find any mention of it on various socials and blogs. Where does that news come from? Just curious.
 
Downtown Spark starts May 25 with international public art around Downtown, plus block party featuring William Price, dance parties, and 'Bark 'n Brew' at Alex Decoteau Park.

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Those balls in the Spark poster look like the big brother and sister of the Talus balls. Wonder if this will maybe eventually become permanent art downtown?
 
Edmonton is lining up the right kinds of things to "activate" downtown... this from the "vaunted" National Post...
DESERTED DOWNTOWNS
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Peter J. Thompson/National Post
While life has come back to Canadian cities — people are travelling, eating out, gathering for conferences — following the COVID-19 pandemic, the Financial Post's Joe O'Connor reports that work-from-home has stubbornly, and perhaps permanently, transformed our cities. People may be going out to sporting events and concerts, but there are far fewer workers downtown, which means there's a lot less money being spent. Researchers used cellphone tracking data to illustrate how much activity is happening in cities and comparing that to pre-pandemic levels. As it turns out, Canadian cities are languishing. Some cities have seen even more active downtowns, such as Salt Lake City, Utah — it has 139 per cent the activity it did pre-pandemic. But major Canadian cities are still at about 50 per cent. Vacancy rates also illustrate this. Vancouver's downtown office vacancy rate is 10.4 per cent, Ottawa's is 13.2 per cent. And Toronto has the highest vacancy rate it has seen since 1995 — 15.3 per cent. “Today, if you walk down King Street on a Tuesday afternoon, you could fire a cannon and nobody would notice,” said Erik Joyal, president of the Ascari Hospitality Group. “The day traffic is not there at all.”
 
Perhaps in this case we were fortunate not to be such a big financial centre like Toronto, which has really got the stuffing kicked out of it as a result of COVID and WFH. For such a major business and financial centre that vacancy rate is very bad.

However, rather than just despair about Canadian cities, it would be helpful to know more about what some places, such as Salt Lake City, have done to get more activity back.
 

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