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According to Univeristy of Toronto Boston ranks #40 out of 62 cities in its downtown recovery. For the Fall 2022-Jan2023 period compared ot the siialr time period in 2019-2020
Downton Recovery
#1 Salt Lake City
#5 San Diego
#7 Baltimore
#10 Colorado Springs
#14 Las Vegas
#18 NYC
#19 DC
#22 Milwaukee
#27 Los Angeles
#31 Phoenix
#40 Boston
#48 Chicago
#52 Philadelphia
#56 Seattle
#60 Portland
#62 San Francisco
What is this based on? There’s just no way this list is accurate. This is saying Baltimore has basically fully recovered from the pandemic when almost everyone who goes there says that it’s basically a wasteland right now.
Pittsburgh above Philly? I love Pittsburgh but that downtown has not come close to recovering as well as Philly has.
What is this based on? There’s just no way this list is accurate. This is saying Baltimore has basically fully recovered from the pandemic when almost everyone who goes there says that it’s basically a wasteland right now.
Pittsburgh above Philly? I love Pittsburgh but that downtown has not come close to recovering as well as Philly has.
Yeah, I'd have to look into the University of Toronto study more, but Center City District actually released a report just today indicating that average daily downtown population (including commuters and visitors) is now 76% of pre-pandemic levels, much higher than the UT number, even though they both apparently use cellphone location methodology. Stands to reason that a more focused, localized study is more recent and accurate, however:
Quote:
CCD’s other data source, Placer.ai, uses anonymized cellphone location data to estimate daily downtown foot traffic in a broader area from Vine Street to South Street, river to river. According to Placer.ai, Center City’s average daily population increased from a low of 113,600 in April 2020 to 326,000 in December 2022, which is 76% of the pre-pandemic December 2019 level.
Adding a historical note for non-Philadelphians reading Duderino's post above:
Vine Street, South Street and the Schuylkill and Delaware rivers are the boundaries of the original town of Philadelphia laid out by Thomas Holme for William Penn in 1682 and incorporated as a city in 1701. This is also the area we call "Center City." The Center City (business improvement) District is part of the Central Philadelphia Development Corporation; it provides extra cleaning, safety and visitor services in part of this territory, the part that includes most of the offices and shops. Property owners in this territory pay a property tax surcharge to fund the district.
The CCD's boundaries were drawn in 1987 to exclude the largely residential parts of Center City. The residential population of the CCD has nonetheless risen significantly since its creation, as both a number of older commercial buildings have been converted to apartments or condos and several all-new apartment and condo buildings have been built over the years since its creation. Those buildings include the tallest (599 feet) and second-tallest (~565 feet) residential buildings in the city, both of which welcomed their first residents last year. (Part of the building that housed the Philadelphia magazine offices until Jan. 14 was converted to apartments two years ago.)
Interesting question for the board. Will your city have a better downtown post pandemic than pre pandemic? Personally, I think downtown DC will be way better in the coming years than it was in the past because nobody lived down there. For decades, I have contemplated what could make downtown DC a major mixed use residential downtown like cities around the US and world, but height limits was such a major restriction.
COVID and telework has actually made residential viable and feasible while height limits pre COVID made residential buildings almost financially impossible to build. DC has been building an extremely dense ring of residential around the older traditional downtown DC that was just an office ghetto. The changes happening in downtown DC is changing the face of this city. What is your prediction for other cities?
This is the data from the first link I shared. That’s when I said it’s strange they don’t include Downtown Crossing- the only neighborhoods with the downtown in it’s name. Downtown Crossing is much emptier so retail spending must be way down, and what few places there are to eat-there are less of those too.
To me the FiDi overall spending number and the Seaport spending numbers don’t make sense.
I think they lump DTX into Financial District. There's one point where they interview a restauranteur who mentions his "Financial District Restaurants" (Mariel, Ruka, and Yvonne's). Two of those are, to me, in Downtown Crossing (Ruka and Yvonne's).
I'd love to see a breakdown all of the spending because I'm confused as to how overall can vary so much from some of those other categories.
Interesting question for the board. Will your city have a better downtown post pandemic than pre pandemic? Personally, I think downtown DC will be way better in the coming years than it was in the past because nobody lived down there. For decades, I have contemplated what could make downtown DC a major mixed use residential downtown like cities around the US and world, but height limits was such a major restriction.
Yeah, I think cities that make a concerted effort to increase the number of residences in their downtowns will be much better off. A better mix of uses will always make for a better area which you can already see in parts of cities like DC.
I think they lump DTX into Financial District. There's one point where they interview a restauranteur who mentions his "Financial District Restaurants" (Mariel, Ruka, and Yvonne's). Two of those are, to me, in Downtown Crossing (Ruka and Yvonne's).
I'd love to see a breakdown all of the spending because I'm confused as to how overall can vary so much from some of those other categories.
Take that UofT report with a grain of salt... they use phone signals/location but never specify boundaries of downtown, nor show absolute numbers. Plus with phones, they don't account for dead spots or even double counting.
The fact that (as an example) they list Montreal in the 40% range is a red flag, considering A&Y vitality index had us at 91% recovery. Miami is at 69% here but the numbers I was privy to get shows 59% recovery. Toronto has hovered in the 60-70%, etc...
Take that UofT report with a grain of salt... they use phone signals/location but never specify boundaries of downtown, nor show absolute numbers. Plus with phones, they don't account for dead spots or even double counting.
The fact that (as an example) they list Montreal in the 40% range is a red flag, considering A&Y vitality index had us at 91% recovery. Miami is at 69% here but the numbers I was privy to get shows 59% recovery. Toronto has hovered in the 60-70%, etc...
I do- it was hard to nail down the validity of their report. But it was just one measure and it sounded pretty good. I don't profess it to be the end all be all. Just one source.
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Office vacancies are another measure of a downtown's health. Many retailers, restaurants, etc rely upon office workers for the economic lifeline of their businesses.
Following report provided by CommercialEdge, which provides the national and select US market total office vacancy rates as of year end 2022:
Canadian city office vacancies per other sources as of year end 2022:
Canada: 17.1%*
Montreal: 17.0*
Toronto: 13.6**
Sources: * Montreal Gazette re CBRE 1/24/23
**Toronto Star re CBRE 1/12/23
The Texas numbers are a bit surprising.
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