Downtown Edmonton is Thriving Arts, Business and Retail Hub
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To fully experience Edmonton’s multi-faceted, one-of-a-kind culture, there’s only one place you need to go – downtown.
With more than 500 places to shop, 200-plus restaurants and several popular clubs, pubs and hotels, Edmonton’s downtown core is a thriving arts, retail, business and government centre that just keeps getting better.
“It’s a fairly small downtown – only eight by 14 blocks,” says Jim Taylor, executive director of the Downtown Business Association. “But we’ve had about 20 high-density residential developments locate there recently, and the office vacancy rate is only three percent. Seven or eight years ago, we didn’t have a Starbucks downtown. Now we have seven.”
Downtown Edmonton has clearly come a long way since it hit rock bottom in the mid-’90s.
“In ’94 and ’95, it was a very depressed area. Downtown businesses were doing poorly,” Taylor recalls. “But around ’96, things started turning around, and in the last 10 years, there’s been phenomenal change. It’s been a very exciting revitalization.”
Today, people are drawn downtown for a variety of reasons – shopping and dining, of course, but also working, going to school at the University of Alberta’s downtown campus and visiting the Arts District. Nestled in the centre of downtown, the Arts District is a four-block area that’s home to key cultural institutions such as the Francis Winspear Centre for Music, the Art Gallery of Alberta and the Shaw Conference Centre, which hosts some of the city’s biggest concerts and events.
“The arts is one of the main things that draws people to live and work here and draws tourists here,” says Marcus Miller, assistant curator at the Art Gallery of Alberta. “We’re in the Arts District next to symphony, theater and the library, and the fact that we’re all clustered together next to City Hall is important. It shows the world that Edmonton supports the arts.”
The Art Gallery of Alberta is currently housed in Enterprise Square in the old Hudson Bay building while its new home is under construction on Sir Winston Churchill Square. Slated for completion in 2010, the 82,000-square-foot building will give the gallery more than 10 times the amount of climate-controlled space than its previous building.
“We’ll be able to handle any kind of historical artwork and bring the best art to Edmonton,” Miller says.
The gallery’s choice to build its new facility downtown was very deliberate.
“With our strong exhibition record in contemporary art, it’s very important for us to be downtown, because artists tend to live downtown and entertain themselves downtown,” Miller says. “And we hope to get street traffic because of our urban location.”
These days, street traffic is something downtown Edmonton certainly isn’t lacking.
“There’s a big chunk of residents living downtown – more than we’ve ever had – and that residential magnet brings friends and relatives downtown,” Taylor says. “Even people who live in the suburbs are coming downtown more because we have boutiques and high-end stores that weren’t here before.”
Allison Byrne lives in a downtown apartment and works in Commerce Place as an industry development officer for the provincial government.
“I choose to live downtown because it’s close to work and has so many amenities,” Byrne says. “There are new clubs and pubs, new housing and cultural elements – it’s really coming alive. I spend most of my time downtown and tend not to even leave the radius because I don’t need to.”
Taylor also lives downtown in a high-rise condominium. He appreciates Edmonton’s downtown core for all its amenities, but also for the way it has helped shape the city’s magnetic culture.
“The Citadel Theatre and the Winspear Centre are both world-class, and they’re both right in the heart of downtown,” he says. “There’s also a huge library downtown, and Churchill Square is a great big plaza downtown where we have all our festivals from May through September. It’s a very vibrant core.”
Story by Jessica Mozo
Photo by Jeff Adkins
