Life on Main: How can we make main streets matter more?

Full Panel
Transcript

Note to readers: This video session was transcribed using auto-transcribing software.  Questions or concerns with the transcription can be directed to citytalk@canurb.org with “transcription” in the subject line.

CityTalk

Life on Main: How can we make main streets matter more?

September 26, 2024

Mary W Rowe Okay. I want us to start on CityTalk … a new tradition. In addition to introducing yourself … I’m Mary Rowe from the Canadian Urban Institute, in addition to going into the chat, introducing yourself and telling us where you’re signing in from, I would like us to step up to the “Wendy Rowland Challenge” and identify the music you were just listening to, which was beautiful. And we’re going to mix the genres, it won’t always be classical, we’ll mix this up … But if you know what that piece of music was that was just being played (we play that music because we try to wait for the room to fill up because, as you know, some people are prompt, prompt, prompt on zoom, other people aren’t). And sometimes the technology delays people getting on. So we give a few minutes, as you saw, to play something. So if you know what that piece of music is, put it in the chat.

I’m Mary Rowe, I’m in Toronto today acknowledging the traditional and ancestral territories of Inuit, Métis and First Nations peoples. We interestingly spent the day yesterday, our board at CUI, we have an indigenous member who encouraged us to take some reflection about place and about breathing and taking a kind of moment in your regular seasonal schedule to acknowledge the place on which you reside, the place on which you live your life, and build your livelihoods, you know, experience, time with your family and friends. It was a really wonderful way to ground us and to have us to begin that process collectively together in whatever settlement we happen to be in. I happen to be in Toronto, Treaty 13 and the William’s Treaty. And we continue, as you know, to try to be vigilant about exploring where the history of colonialism and particular the way property is organized … I feel like urbanism is full of colonial practices, some of which we don’t even notice as settlers. And we need to be much more alive to the constraints that that places on us, and the constraints it puts on other people and the constraints that it’s imposed on indigenous communities for years and years and years and decades and decades and decades. So it’s, as I always say, urbanism is for everyone. But urbanism is not for the faint hearted. We have a lot to do. So let’s get busy. Thanks for joining us on CityTalk, here to talk about Main Streets. As you now see, CUI has been engaged with Main Streets for several years. We started before the pandemic with something called Bring Back Main Street. And then through the pandemic became much more intensively focused on main streets as a unit of analysis. And this, believe it or not, is not a given. It’s probably a given for the hundreds of you that are listening to this, you probably know why your main street matters. But many, many, many decision makers in public policy, in corporate policy and civic leadership don’t actually notice the ground. They don’t notice Main Street as a unit of infrastructure, like bridges, like roads, like hospitals, like libraries, which are often on main streets. So we have been trying here to shift this mindset with whoever will listen, to start seeing places and seeing the way in which economic and social and environmental goals are addressed and are challenged and solved in places. And in our particular case, we’re suggesting main streets, of which there are 30,000, a few fewer, in communities of every size across this country. So even small towns, if you go and ask them where their main street is, they’ll tell you. And if you go into a suburban community where the built form has evolved in different kinds of ways and more traffic, more emphasis on car traffic in suburban communities as opposed to downtowns. .. Even there, you ask them where their main street is, and they’ll tell you. They’ll tell you it’s behind, that strip mall or it’s over in those four corners, or … people understand this concept of Main Street. And that’s the message that we continue to want to advance. That place matters. Streets matter. And streets matter as public realm. And we can expect a lot from a street, not just a place to park a car or stash a bicycle, or … There’s lots of things that go on in the street and they are ours. The streets belong to all of us. So end of Mary Rowe’s little rant. I hope some folks identified the music. I haven’t gone on the chat yet to see it. Remember that the chat, we publish the chat and so if you put some stuff up there, lots of people put resources up there, they put questions up there … really useful for us if you do that. If you are what is known colloquially as a Citytalk lurker, in other words, you come, you’re having a cup of coffee or a sandwich, it’s kind of off the side of your desk … Fine. But if you’ve never actually enlisted in the chat, you’re missing a very dynamic group of folks who do a lot of animated conversation. It’s kind of like a parallel universe. We’ve got this great conversation you’re about to hear. And then on the chat, there’s a whole bunch of other stuff. You’re missing something. So you know what? Take a risk. Go on that chat today, see what people are saying. They never disappoint me. I watch the chat blow up all the time, and I appreciate our … The way we multitask. Let’s just say – some people are multitaskers. Not everyone is. It’s fine. There’s lots of places for different kinds of folks. So anyway, I’ll ask my guests to join us. Well, we’re going to talk about main streets, we’re going to talk about how you get back on a main street. What are the challenges on a main street? What do we see as the particular kinds of assets that main streets bring? What are we actually experiencing there? And how do we ground ourselves in our conversation? And I only seem to see Sameer. I hope that some other folks are joining. But, Sameer, it might just be you and me kid.

Sameer Patel  I will say I’m a self-professed, Citytalk lurker. So …

Mary W Rowe Ohhh … Truth wins out. Okay, well, there you go. Well, I’m trying to convert you to being more. So let’s start with you, Sameer. And I also was saying to the gang when we were just getting ready for the sound checks, that everybody unmutes because I’m on a little personal mission here to eliminate the mute button. And then we all just … So we can talk as naturally as we possibly can, the way you do in normal situations. So Sameer, thanks for joining us. Talk to us a little bit about your particular perspective. I always ask people to suggest, where are you coming in from, where are you signing on from? And then give us your particular lens of what your view is of the potential challenges on a main street. Over to you.

Sameer Patel So I’m calling in from Toronto, east end, in Riverdale. And, I think your opening intro sort of speaks to me very specifically because our nonprofit, Divercities looks to facilitate equitable access to ground for retail. And the macro lens of that is, I feel we take main streets a bit for granted, at least in the Canadian context we have … I’ve used your quote Mary before in terms of, I think it’s 85% of the population is within proximity to a Main Street. [Yeah]. And, because our main streets, you know, they’re there, they’re fairly viable. I think we forget what would happen if they sort of started turning into vacant strips. And what we’re trying to do with diversity is to sort of raise the flag in terms of the benefits that main streets offer, just in terms of community health, mental health benefits and research, trying to tie it to other areas. You know, the City of Toronto, their parks and recreation budget is half a billion dollars. And we have that budget because we understand the benefits of green space. And I believe and we believe at Divercities, that those same benefits, come from main streets. And so when you’re able to see the, the diversity of main streets, the traffic, etc., that helps with community health. So that’s sort of where my lens is.

Mary W Rowe So interesting. You know, I just want to flag for people … You know, that great Jane Jacob’s adage about “eyes on the street”. And, you know, her description from, Death and Life, where she said that, you know, there’s the ballet of the street and there’s so many … And, you know, she just paid attention to what she saw and realized organically that the street was kind of the heart of activity. And as you suggest, a critical component of that is the retail activity. And if … and so when … I’m always interested if people in the chat, because we have people dialing in from across North America and even some Europeans and folks from other continents. We are eager to hear what your views are too. Just send us a couple of sentences in the chat about what your main street looks like. Because I would say our main streets in Canadian cities continue to be in a state of challenge. And so I want us to try to collectively understand what that is about. And when I say that, what am I saying? What am I observing that would make me think that it is in a state of challenge. So the kinds of things that I pay attention to would be vacant storefronts, higher incidences of mental health – where people are obviously struggling and need supports and they’re not getting them. And then also this sort of and I’ll be interested, I’m going to come next actually to Taylor because, the other sort of flip of this is when a main street redevelops and suddenly it has some investment to create, let’s say, housing or some other kind of institutional use. The main street may transform in a certain kind of way, but does it actually get better? Or does it actually just change in a way? And I lived in New York, Taylor, I don’t think you and I ever met when I was in New York. I was there for six years, but, I know, we watched this happen on Main Street neighborhoods across the five boroughs. And so I’m interested to hear your perspective. So welcome to CityTalk, Taylor, and welcome for joining us. And I love the name of your  not-for-profit Bricks and Mortals, I love it but I also know that that we in Canadian cities, we love American cities, just saying. We love to learn from you. We love to talk about, you know, how we’re different from you, but in lots of ways we’re the same. So tell us what you’re seeing in terms of main streets in your practice, and also in terms of the advocacy work you do at Bricks and Mortals.

Taylor Aikin Yeah. That’s right. Well, and it’s actually … it was the intersection of the practice and the work that Bricks and Mortals does that sort of brought me to this to begin with. The question you asked, is it actually getting better? With the … Yes, we’re looking at change. Yes … The dynamics and pressures that are facing real estate, particularly, we were looking at real estate held by faith based institutions as these centers of social services, the centers of community events, these sort of critical sources for urban stability that are in decline. And I know the stats south of your border. I don’t know them north, but, you know, this Hartford study, Hartford Seminary study, showed that three out of five faith based organizations face closure in the next 5 to 10 years if things stay on the current trajectory, that, congregation attendance is declining. But at the same time, we know, part of what formed the idea for Bricks and Mortals, for which I cannot take credit is a study that was done by Partners for Sacred Places. They’re an organization run out of Philadelphia. They did what they called the Economic Halo Effect Study in 2016, where they looked at congregations all across the country. Well sorry … three different cities, 90 congregations in total, to see, like what was the actual impact to the communities that these congregations had. And they showed a couple of interesting things. One is that only about 11% of the people that walked in the door in any given week, were there for worship. The people were going there for all sorts of reasons, sort of, validating the claim. These are critical, social institutions that are key to things like addressing services needed by people with mental health struggles. And it proved that not only are they sort of nice sources of free support, but they’re also … They also provide economic benefit. We found that the average among these 90 congregations was about $1.7 million annually in economic benefits to the community. So this sort of sets the stakes. But you also, you know, the same figures indicate the health of those institutions – that if only 11% of the people who walk in the door are actually there when the basket gets passed around, it tells you something about sort of where they are. So that’s Bricks and Mortals, the nonprofit.

Mary W Rowe I love it, I just love the name. I just love the meaning of it. You’re making me think. But I we are doing, at CUI, with support from a foundation here, an inquiry. And I’m hoping my colleagues on the planning side are listening to this program, on what is the role of institutions that faith built? And that may in fact be in some state of transition. And what does that mean to the main street? And we have, again, I’d ask people in the chat to comment on this, but we have lots and lots of communities, many of whom will be represented on this call, where their main corners might have three churches on the same corner. And there are fewer and fewer people attending those, as you suggest, are attending those places of worship. And so the financial sustainability of those places is in jeopardy. And, you know, how many of them can be turned into high end condos, like that makes me nervous. But also there’s often, in smaller communities, there’s no demand for those high end condos. So then you’re in a situation where the building just … Is allowed to just, you know, fall into disrepair. And the challenge for us and I don’t know if you have the same Taylor in the US, although, again, when I was in New York, I watched it, is that there’s no property tax benefit going to the municipal government to be able to fund municipal services because those faith institutions have been tax free for, you know, centuries in some cases. Just saying. And so suddenly you’re in that bind, too. And we also know that these places provide all sorts of social services. So yes, on a Sunday morning or a Saturday, or Friday, depending on which holy day it is, they may have a certain amount of traffic, but five other days of the week they’re running, you know, bake sales and foot clinics and Out In The Cold programs and AA meetings and all that kind of stuff. So I’m appreciative that you’re doubling down on this and focusing on it. And it’s not that we’re trying to supplant the initial intent or purpose of those faith communities, but that they’re changing and morphing too. And can we look more at co-location? Can we look more at adaptive reuse? Can we look at … and I know these are all things that you’re exploring. So, CUI’s done a lot of work on advocating for the  conversion of commercial space. And I think we have to now look at the conversion of these kinds of civic spaces too, and that we always … We always want more flexibility in urbanism. Right? We always want to build stuff that can do a whole bunch of things and can change and morph. Anyika, let’s go to you next, because I wanted to hear specifically about the experience that you’re embedded in, of a main street that has tremendous historical significance, cultural significance, and is experiencing what I suggested earlier, this kind of transition, right? As it morphs, it’s not staying the same. But how does it transition in a way that doesn’t displace, that salutes and celebrates the deep history and, tradition of the community. Right? And the people that have invested decades and raised their kids there. And so give us your perspective, if you could, from … And you’re going to talk to us I know about an interesting kind of mechanism that might help strengthen the main street. Go for it.

Anyika Mark Yes, exactly. Yeah. So maybe just to give a little bit of context. So I’m coming from – my organization is called Black Urbanism TO, or the organization I work for is called Black Urbanism TO. We are founded in 2018 to ensure that there were more black folks involved in community development. And this was primarily because we are folks from Little Jamaica, Eglinton West in Toronto. So for folks that don’t know, between Eglinton West and Keele Street, is what we would name as Little Jamaica. In the 1950s, the Canadian immigration system changed so that there was more support for Caribbean immigrants to come to the country. They settled in Eglinton. But the rest of the Canadian side was, you know, still a little bit segregated. And so Little Jamaica became this diasporic hub where it was not only a space for belonging, but it was also a way to provide each other with cultural services, products, you know, music, food, tailor, fashion, things that they were having in their home countries that they now need to replicate, in their host countries. And so that’s the context that we’re coming from. In the past couple years, it’s been … There’s been some, you know, disruptive, I want to say disruptive because that’s really what it’s been, you know, transit construction. While we love the opportunity for there to be more transit in the neighborhood, it needs to make sure that it’s equitable and that it includes members of the community that, like I was saying, have been here since the 1950s, 1960s, not only just being, you know, business owners, but like we’re speaking about, really providing the sense of essence and belonging for members of the black community for Toronto. And so what … where we’re coming in is, you know, we’re hoping to create a community land trust model. We’ve incorporated in 2022, the name is the Little Jamaica Community Land Trust. And really, what we’re looking to do is to take properties, particularly mixed use properties, because that is what our main street is made of. It’s made of commercial and then tenants on the top, which is also in the spirit of immigrants coming to the city, creating these, you know, great entrepreneurial endeavors and then also living on top of their businesses. And so that has been kind of the infrastructure of our main street in Little Jamaica. And so we’re really hoping that our land trust can start to take some of those mixed use development and properties off of the market and be able to make it, permanently affordable for business owners, but then also make sure that we’re combating displacement, because number one thing, a number one problem is that we have limited property ownership, right? So we have maybe about 5% black property ownership in the neighborhood. The majority of you know, our legacy businesses are renters. And so our little Jamaica Community Land Trust is going to really provide them with that stability that they need to kind of, you know, continue on and be able to benefit off of great transit infrastructure that’s coming to parts of the city.

Mary W Rowe It’s interesting, this notion of who owns what, you know, and just what you’re getting at. So a land trust is a way of signaling community ownership, right? [Yeah]. So why don’t you … can you describe to people a little bit, because we’ve got lots of folks coming in from the U.S., for instance, (I love we’ve got somebody here from rock and roll, Bellingham, Washington state), can you just explain to them what a land trust is and what you think that would give you that you don’t have now?

Anyika Mark Yeah, absolutely. So, Community Land Trust, is essentially a nonprofit vehicle, that’s used to provide heritage conservation. That’s kind of, you know, been, I think it’s biggest use. And I think in recent times it’s really focused on affordable housing, being able to take, you know, properties off of the speculative market and make sure that communities are receiving affordable housing. But essentially what their purpose is to make sure that the integrity of the neighborhoods, so whether that’s cultural or, you know, if there’s like … there’s a local ecosystem – business, commercial, I guess essence that, you know, members of the community want to maintain. This is where community land trust would come in, because then as a nonprofit entity, it’s able to, you know, maybe get grants for staff or get grants for land acquisition or be able to work more in collaboration with, you know, our government, our, you know, our municipal government particularly has been really, really helpful, and supportive with some of the endeavors the Land Trust wants to take on in the next few years. But also our province, it’s a great body for our province to interact with as well. And so really what we’re hoping for the land trust to do, like I was saying, is to be able to combat displacement – that I think is one of the biggest issues with our Main Street right now. And recently we had a development coming to the main street that is 2 x 40 story condos, that is right on our main street. That is going to really shake, you know, the framework that, you know, you know, particularly Caribbean and Afro-Caribbean immigrants have created over the past decades and decades. And so our land trust is really going to hopefully do that work of being able to preserve culture, but also find ways for members of our community to stay and continue to reap the benefit in neighborhoods they’ve called home.

Mary W Rowe You know, it’s interesting this business of, the threat of redevelopment. I’m going to get the other panelists in as well. Because one of the challenges I think we have is, you know, you want redevelopment, but if it means displacement, then it kind of defeats the purpose. And not only do displace people, you displace neighbors and people that have had housing there. I always am concerned about second floor. Somebody in the chat is asking Taylor, you’ll be interested because in New York, this huge problem. Second floors are undeveloped on main streets often – we could be having businesses up there, we don’t. But, we have lots of alternate housing that sits on second floors and, cheap housing often. And it used to be that, you know, you could … If you were a newcomer and you wanted to get into the business and the real estate market, you might have enough dough that you could actually buy that building. Unlikely now, but you might have been able to and you could have lived above a store, right? The old “lived above the store” notion. So, we have … In some cases we have housing, people living there. In some cases we have vacant second floors. And I think that’s a … we need a particular challenge there about – can we get them back into the housing market in an affordable housing space or not, or can we put retail up there in some other capacity or some other thing? But Anyika, if you go to community land trusts, what happens to the math then? Is there any resistance to introducing community land trust because it will diminish the taxes that are going into municipal government? How do we offset that? Because there’s no tax on a community land trust right?

Anyika Mark Yeah. That’s interesting. I actually haven’t come across that question as of yet. So I don’t know if I would have like the best answer. But from what I know, we’ve had a really great response from our city. I think especially with, you know, how important a neighborhood like little Jamaica is, like our … in Toronto, Chinatown, like our Danforth, our Greektown, we’ll say, but, you know, these are really important parts of Toronto’s, you know, local ecosystem, macro ecosystem. And so we see our city council and, you know, different city departments really interested in engaging and figuring out ways that are … Like to elevate the work of the land trust to do some of the work that, you know, city planning also wants to do, which is, you know, maintain, you know, cultural spaces and, you know, preserve legacy businesses. So I would be interested, I’m definitely going to talk to the team about that question though Mary.

Mary W Rowe Know what’s going to happen. Somebody smart in the chat is going to give us an answer. So who in the chat can tell us a little bit about what are the tax implications on the municipal budget, municipal coffers, the amount of revenue they get if you create CLTs … how does it affect property tax revenues? I’ll be interested to see … somebody smart will put something in there. and we’ll figure it out. Okay. Mukhtar, let’s listen from you, your particular perspective, in terms of the diverse ways in which you’re looking at these topics and specifically … also tell us where you are, maybe tell us where your local main street is.

Mukhtar Latif I’m coming from Vancouver, the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) and yeah, I’ve had a fairly diverse interaction with Main Streets. And I think it’s a really important conversation that you’re having right now about how we can focus and save the main streets whilst you can, because I think having been brought up … I grew up in London, UK, and in the 70s, in the 80s you had your baker, your grocer, your candle stick maker on your doorstep. And what we saw over the years, when we had increased competition from the large supermarkets coming in that were able to pull and leverage the individual economies of scale and bring down costs, we had a much more competitive market in the UK. To some extent, you’re fortunate and unfortunate in Canada in the fact that you’ve got a fairly … It’s not as competitive in terms of the food side of things, and therefore you find that the prices are relatively high and therefore the smaller retailers can actually compete on price. And so from my perspective, I’m coming from looking at it in terms of community and viability, in terms of Main Street, having worked at the City of Vancouver, looking at how do we sustain and maintain those smaller businesses and the … Like you said, the unique cultural aspects of a neighborhood that everybody wants to see. And how do you make that viable in the long term? I mean, I’m working currently for crosswalk communities and that, basically, is looking to see how we can build sustainable communities leveraging social impact investment with the fact that you’ve got a model that can leverage social impact investment to deliver housing at scale, because that’s one of the challenges that we’re seeing around affordable housing, is that’s one of projects, and those are really expensive. So how do you build viability and sustainability by building scale. So that’s what we’re looking to do across Canada. In practice, what we see in some of these communities is that there’s a whole range of pressures that are coming in around the fact that you’ve got community aspects that you don’t find in a supermarket. You see that in the local shops. And how do you retain that? You get more isolation in those large cities when you get the chain stores and the large retailers coming in and people becoming more and more isolated. When I was in the UK, we had, as you mentioned, a number of initiatives to try and bring back main streets and density and diversity is one of the things that we saw happening because in England you have these small terraced houses. So you have a lot of density around the main streets that sustains the businesses. And then what we saw over time as shops … well people retired and moved on. You had new waves of opportunity opening up, especially for new migrants coming in. Because you then create opportunities to bring those cultures and lifestyles and, and, and community in back into the main street, which then allows that to be revitalized in a way. And we did a lot of regeneration schemes in the UK as well, where we were bringing aged housing and communities and redeveloping those. And one of the things that we tried to do as part of those projects, and this is something that Vancouver’s keen to do, is to ensure that there’s a level of affordability in that new development. So it’s not all about the fact that you are trying to create just affordable housing, but you also look at ways that you can sustain and support the local community and make sure that the retailers that come back into that space can actually afford the rents as well. So it is a bigger picture, as you said, in terms of bringing all levels of government and private sector on board. One of the things that we saw in central London is when the large developers were selling to the large retailers, unless you had a viable community around you, you couldn’t really support the retail. And I think that’s one of the challenges that we see across town is that the density to some extent is making the rents more expensive. But on the other hand, it does maintain businesses. So how do businesses and the community work together to … (we’re getting a bit of feedback) … How does the community and residents work together to sustain this local neighborhood.

Mary W Rowe You sound fine to us, just so you know, you’re just getting feedback. You sound fine. Let’s have everybody come on to the screen so that we can … This is always the fun part, the bun fight, I call it. So we can have an open chat, Wendy, just get everybody equal on the screen, not just me. And, let’s have a broader conversation about the challenges – some folks are putting them in in the chat. I appreciate it. So if you’ve got particular challenges folks in the main streets you work in, put them in the chat. And the group here will have a go at it. We talked a little bit about the property tax issue and whether or not it’s diminishing, what’s happening to municipal property tax the more vacancies you have. We all know examples where municipal governments have introduced a vacant store tax to try to … because I … we see this everywhere at every scale. I’m sure you see it in the US as well, Taylor, that landlords will allow a main street retail space to sit empty for a long time and speculate. And they just wait until they get a developer deal. And so what are the steps that we can do to combat that? I’ve also got an interesting question, I see that my old pal Carol Coletta is on the call from Memphis. And, you know, she’s been spearheading the Civic Commons initiatives across the U.S. and very specifically, a large, large, park investment in Memphis. So where do you see, in the Main streets sort of …  pastiche, whatever that right word is. What’s the role of green spaces? What’s the role of parks? Do you know what I mean? Like, do we … How do we actually introduce all these other uses so that the main street becomes a mix of everything? You’re nodding. Anyika, do you think about that? Are you thinking about green space too in parks?

Anyika Mark Yeah, absolutely. And maybe not just green space or parks, but, you know, little pieces like that. So, like, maybe more trees on our main street or more flowerpots or even being able to carve out, like, lounge and loitering space on main streets. Why not? Especially, you know, when we’re talking about, you know, wanting to support our local ecosystems, giving people ways to, you know, really engage and interact with our main streets by providing, you know, nice little sitting areas or green spaces, for instance. I think it’s something we think about a lot. I think it’s … especially because esthetics and trying to, you know, retain people in the main street. What are things that are going to keep people coming back and what are going to keep people consistent as well? So I was nodding because, yes, absolutely yes to green spaces. I have a two year old, and so green space is something I look for in any neighborhood that I go to, in any space of the city that I’m at, because I need to have that opportunity for, you know, my son to be able to play and then me be able to, you know, do my own things with life. So that’s why I was very vigorously nodding.

Mary W Rowe Yeah, I get it. I mean, and I love that you use loitering. Let’s take some of these words back that have a pejorative meaning. Let’s bring them back into being good. We need a bumper sticker. Let’s bring back loitering.  Loitering as a good thing. Hanging around is a good thing. Just being in a space together is a good thing. Sameer, I’ve got a question for you about retail. Because it’s something that sort of boggles my mind often. Again, we’re talking about … you redevelop a main Street and, you know, the circus comes to town and people think, “oh, great, there’s going to be redevelopment” and what happens often, someone can point out to me an exception, but let’s say they do the assembly, they get 12 storefronts, they get access to that land. They put up a six storey building. We get all sorts of housing. It’s hardly ever affordable. Now they might be insisting some be affordable, but up goes the housing, six storeys. But that ground floor retail ends up being chains. And we lose the mom and pops … We’ve got to have another … I need another … somebody put up a new lexicon. Let’s replace “mom and pop” with something else. But we lose the independent retail piece because the floor plates are too big, right, Taylor? I know you know. But Sameer, is anybody looking at that from a collaborative retail? Are there other ways to pencil this out so that independent businesses can find a way back into a redeveloped Main Street? What is the … I look to the UK where it’s called the High Street. But part of what we’re trying to suggest is that Main Street is now … High Street feels nostalgic to me. We’re talking about Main Street is where it’s at now. So Sameer, what can we do about retail? Can we mix it up?

Sameer Patel So we think about this every day. I think it’s a bit more complicated …

Sameer Patel … Because those mixed use developments that come in, the reason a lot of them stay vacant is actually a bit more high level in terms of its bank financing and covenant requirement. So the developers want to get somebody who they know can pay rent for five years, plus another five years. And what happens is that the independents or what we’re calling the “mom and pops” don’t typically have that covenants grant to allow them to lease in there.

Mary W Rowe Can’t we figure out a way to intervene there. Can’t we find a way to find institutional capital or private capital or philanthropic capital or public sector subsidy? How do we do the math? Sameer.

Sameer Patel So there’s a couple of things we’re looking at. One is – can we get an easier path for community benefit charges for developers to allow in-kind contributions of commercial space to make that path less friction? Anyika knows this in her work …

Mary W Rowe Sameer, tell me what that means. What would a community benefit agreement look like to do that?

Sameer Patel So for the national audience, in the Ontario context certain developments, I believe if they are over five stories of height, require a benefits contribution to the city of 4% of the land value to pay for infrastructure costs, etc., during intensification. But one of the ways is that, as a developer, you can pay that 4% as an in-kind contribution, which may be donating that commercial … not necessarily donating … But allowing that commercial space to be then put into, for instance, Anika’s Land Trust and then … so instead of the 4% cash to the city … But that process is not simple and there’s no real mechanism from the city that allows for that in-kind contribution to be easily done. The developer has to come to somebody like Anyika and create a private conversation, which I think Anyika in your experience is years, it’s very long. And you need to have a developer that is interested in it because it’s easier to cut a 4% check, then to have to understand how to relate the space. The other thing we’re looking at is models. So there’s a fantastic organization in Vancouver called Community Impact Real Estate Society. We’re trying to bring their model to Toronto, and they have a cross subsidy model where they’ve taken BC housing space. So BC housing gave them 100,000ft², and they’ve taken the good parts of that space and leased it out to Domino’s, to LifeLabs … But that rent then cross subsidizes social impact, social entrepreneur space. And those people pay zero rent. They just paid their taxes, etc. but they don’t pay any rent. So the City of Toronto has a lot of space, TCHC has a lot of space, and we’re trying to get to a point where the city or TCHC or somebody else understands what we had talked about, the health benefits of Main Street and this idea that main streets aren’t just commerce.  I was going to chime in about the parks – when we think about parks, we view as a retail park where we increased dwell time. So you put parks there, more people stay on the main street, they spend more money, it becomes more vibrant. But more than that, and this comes to Taylor’s part, where you know, in the past, where, you know, churches, etc. were areas of community where you can build social capital. So we’re losing the ability to build social capital, especially in Toronto with huge amount of immigrants. Where do they go to make connections? And the main street is the place now where we can create those areas where to loiter, or whatever you want to call them, where you can start creating social capital and you develop your contacts and the main street can become all those things. So it’s not just commerce, but the green space allows for those connections to be made when those connections in the past would have been made in the community centers and the churches, etc., which are starting to disappear.

Mary W Rowe Right? So it’s different. Anyika, what’s the term ” liming”?

Anyika Mark Liming. Yes. In the Caribbean, I mean, yes.

Mary W Rowe I like liming. Are we “liming” okay, that is an alternative or “dwell time”. Other suggestions … Taylor, what’s going on in large metropolitan centers in the US. And I guess particularly, what are you doing in the boroughs in New York? How do you balance what we’re just describing? I remember from my time in New York when 125th Street was being redeveloped in Harlem, and they really wanted those main floors to stay local retail and the developers in this case, as you were suggesting, Sameer, the developers in that case, and it was financed by Goldman Sachs, they were concerned about this, but we couldn’t find the right fiscal mechanisms to do it. Have you uncovered anything since I left? You probably solved it after I left.

Taylor Aikin Well, no. So things have only gotten weirder since you left. [Oh. Okay then]. But there is a … I think that the two primary forces are the real estate market only gets more efficient, and that the physical infrastructure is bound by a zoning resolution that was designed to reflect a market condition that was a moment in time, but it’s very different from where we are now. So there is a massive misalignment between physical infrastructure and human behavior in New York City. And of course, now through our avenue of supporting faith based organizations and their real estate. So Bricks and Mortals sort of came with a raft of policy proposals, a bunch of which are being voted on by the city this year in order to update the zoning resolutions to reflect more of the current needs, sort of within that space. But of course, it also impacts affordable housing construction, use assignments and urban areas. The City of Yes proposal here is massive, some massive rezoning efforts. So that’s an effort. But I think what we’re also focused on is that for as much as the physical infrastructure matters in terms of, having actual functional main streets, the human infrastructure is just as important, the institutional network. And so that that same Hartford study and the hopeful part of it that said, everybody was [not audible] … The hopeful part of it is that it points to successes of faith based organizations to become more connected, both to each other, to their communities … the more connected they are, the more they can capitalize on the sort of nascent connections they have with the communities and how much everyone relies on them, the better their chances of survival. And then once you have that, as you say, once you have the locale for connection and the institutional infrastructure connection, then the placement (not audible), then people are there, then then the rest falls into place.

Mary W Rowe Yeah. I mean, I know we all fundamentally believe in, I’m assuming, at least on this call, that we believe in the strength of diversity, that the more diverse the tenant mix, the more diverse a user mix, the more diverse everything looks and the different kinds of activities, the more people you will attract, the more different kinds of people you will attract. Are there specific things … I’m interested in …  you know, we read about the Getting to Yes campaign and whether or not it’s working. Are there specific things that each of you have observed from your perspective, something very straightforward, let’s say, that could change … That would make it easier to introduce more diversity on the main street. Mukhtar, I’ll come to you because you’ve worked in a bunch of different environments, including in Vancouver. Is there a single thing that could change that would unlock that more diversity?

Mukhtar Latif Yeah. What I saw happening in the U.K., you had large department stores, and as you said, the current infrastructure is such that you got such a large space that nobody can actually afford to take that on. What you found was that you did have someone who took that on and subdivided that store into smaller retail units, just lock ups that people could just take a small space or a large space, depending on what their business needs are. And that actually brought a lot of vibrancy. I mean, if you go down Southhall … Which is a South Asian street in West London, I mean, that that was in danger of becoming so expensive that it was only going to be … It didn’t really meet the needs of the local community because you never could afford to pay the rent. You had to charge very high rent, pricing for all the clothing and materials. So they’ve divided those up and those are now successful for the landlords because they got loads of tenants now that can generate revenue for them. And it’s successful for the retailers because they can afford to pay as small or as large as space that they need to manage their business. And having that diversity, like you said, attracts a whole load of customers that will sustain that and they open early, finish late and the work open seven days a week because it’s just so much more …

Mary W Rowe Yeah, I mean … I think there is that 24/7 piece too and I live on a main street and so there’s always ambivalence about this. Do we really want to be open 24/7. But … Again back to eyes on the street, the busiest streets is the safest street. You know, it’s interesting going back to where we were about how we increase diversity. Are there other particular things that are in place that block this kind of flexible use? Anyika, are there for you that you’ve observed? Something simple that’s preventing different kinds of operations moving in, like I’m interested, for instance … Empty lots. Here, we’re starting to see people going in with a vacant lot and doing something kind of cool. They’re putting those little courts up where people can hit a ball, you know, pop ups, different kinds of markets. Are there other … and I’m assuming that that’s happening because somebody’s removed a dumb rule that prevented it. Are there any other dumb rules, Anyika? Any dumb rules that you’ve run into in little Jamaica that we should just get rid of?

Anyika Mark Not necessarily dumb rules, but we have very rigid parking rules.

Mary W Rowe Yeah.

Anyika Mark That hurts our main street a lot because especially for, you know, cultural districts like Little Jamaica, we’re talking about people coming from outside of the city to the district and into the city. Right? And so obviously, you know, as realistic as bike lanes and, you know, transit is … we also have a lot of folks that are just coming in vehicles. And so I would say that that maybe it’s not it’s, you know, there’s probably rationale for it. But I think that that’s the …

Mary W Rowe What do you want? You want more parking or less parking?

Anyika Mark More parking for sure 

Mary W Rowe You want more parking …

Anyika Mark More parking for sure. Because I think it would definitely help expand clientele. And then also be able to support like other cultural activations that are happening. So like, you were kind of speaking to, Mary, we have the Afro-Caribbean farmers market that happens bi weekly in a green-P Parking lot. It’s organized by community leader Laurie Buser. Incredible work. It brings together, you know, great black farmer collectives, you know, micro businesses to little Jamaica, where it’s already a thriving black business corridor. And then we also had the Little Jamaica Festival that brought, you know, hundreds of thousands of people to the main street to, you know, to celebrate the neighborhood and celebrate culture. So I don’t know if that answered your question about like, flexibility?

Mary W Rowe What’s interesting about it there is that you’re telling me there’s a parking lot, but it’s also being used for a market, and then I can tolerate it a bit more. You know, I always … If there’s anybody from London on this call, they’ve heard us talk about it before. We’ve had Londoners come on … 67 service parking lots in downtown London that basically have very few cars in them. So that’s part of what I’m looking for is how do we get multiple uses? Can it be a park on a Saturday and a market on a Sunday? And then on Tuesday to Thursday it takes deliveries, whatever it is, anything like that, that’s flexible. Just a plug for my team to put into the chat. You know, we have a program called My Main Street, only in southern Ontario, but it is providing resources to small businesses and activations exactly as you just described Anyika, and it’s a good … It’s just, you know, in the stages where awards are being given, but eventually they’ll be stories coming out of that. And the other piece is Measuring Main Street. If you are wondering about the composition of your Main Street, what are its assets? 30,000 of them … We have mapped them on Measuring Main Streets in Canada. And as we make this point to every decision maker we put in front of, look at how many people are employed here, look at how much GDP comes from here. And then also start to evaluate the, vulnerabilities. There aren’t enough green spaces or there’s not enough diversity or, you know, the second floors … or whatever it is. So, going back to just one thing, anything, Taylor, in your head, one thing that you’ve tried to do that could alter the diversity mix. If you’re … Your mayor is going through a bit of stuff, I listen to the news. But if you were the mayor and you weren’t going through that stuff, what would you do?

Taylor Aikin So it’s a really boring answer. The answer is money.

Mary W Rowe Okay, okay. That’s a good answer. Money. How? Who money?

Taylor Aikin Yeah. So, when you talked about how … like we see this actually with our inaudible) institutions here in the northeast that sort of gobble up real estate, and every time they buy a property, it leaves the public tax rolls. So it works the other way, too. Yeah. When municipal administrations decide something is important, they find ways to fund it. So for years and years there was a tax subsidy that supported the construction of affordable housing, rental housing, specifically in New York City. But sun-setted because the market was great, everybody had an apartment. And then guess what? They didn’t. And now this year, they’ve reinstated it. They’re putting money back into construction of affordable housing. Because it was important, because there was a broad enough constituency who said this is critical to our well-being and the health of the city. And so we need to articulate what are the things that are critical to the well-being and health of the city. And from our perspective, that’s broadly the health of the institutions that serve it. But all of those other things support it and the parking is so interesting because …

Mary W Rowe No you go ahead. Tell me about parking. I never drove in New York. I would never dare …

Taylor Aikin It’s just so local, like block to block neighborhood. The city doesn’t … So we are pushing really hard to reduce the parking requirements in New York City because they are an impediment to the construction of affordable housing. And you look at empty lots here, and there’s a reason, there’s a very good reason each and every lot of your city is empty. It’s because there is something deeply wrong with it that is not just a stupid rule, but really complicated. So …

Mary W Rowe Right, right, I hear you. Just going back to, you know, how we’re going to imagine the transformation of these … Or what’s the right word that sounds said a little too intentional … The evolution of main streets. You know, we have a challenge in the public service in Canada with a lot of public offices, that aren’t necessarily being occupied to the full extent they might. But we’ve also got lots of public services that people need access to. Sameer, have you looked at all at how you get public services to locate or co-locate onto main streets? What about prioritizing that kind of thing that we … So that when you’re on a main street, you have a … this is the old days, you’d have a post office … could there be other services? Could I get my driver’s license on the main street? Could I get my passport on the main street? Could I? … And we all got our Covid shots on the main street. So can I start to think about … Just concentrate on the main street. Let’s put as much there as we possibly can.

Sameer Patel We could, but I think that sort of feeds into this idea that where it does it happen is within the chains. Right? Like I think we’ve seen it with Staples and them allowing for sort of like your, Ontario Services ….

Mary W Rowe like Service Ontario goes into one …

Sameer Patel Service Ontario … But then are we encouraging more Staples and chains to go onto main streets? There certainly are co-locations. And it works. But the efficiencies are difficult when we have to identify individual locations in every main street versus just finding a chain that has, you know, 300 locations across the country where they can just put them in. But I’ll go back to your question about one thing. And I think it’s data. So you’re like main streets platform is an awesome start. It’s amazing. But the reality is that it’s realtors and property owners on main streets that dictate who the tenants are going to be. So what we’ve tried really hard to do is provide BIAs with data. Then they can go show to it leasing agent in terms of what is their surrounding competition. So when we talk about diversity, we can show them, that this is the area you’re servicing. This is who lives in the area. It’s changing drastically as it intensifies. And here’s your new audience. And I think this … And be able to sort of just talk to the leasing agents. So we’re doing work in Queen West BIA. I talked to the leasing agents, half of them said, we don’t care, we’ll just lease to anybody who pays the most rent. And the other half said, no, we are really interested in how to make sure that Queen Street stays as Queen Street, and how do we intentionally lease those. And to those leasing agents, we’re going to provide data … we’ll say this is who lives in the surrounding area. These are the types of stores you can work with. And at the end of the day, they are the ones who control really what that street’s going to look like.

Mary W Rowe So interesting, you know, I don’t know whether we have very many real estate agents who listen to CityTalk. We better start doing more outreach … do you hear that gang. Let’s start reaching out to the real estate agents across the country to start listening. Because I hear what you’re suggesting, that that’s an intervention point. If the real estate agents were with you on that, and presumably you want to continue to have a main street be unique and different, it can’t look the same everywhere you go because then it diminishes its extra appeal. So, boy, this is a tricky thing because if it gets too fancy, it becomes unaffordable. So there we are, the reality of urbanism right in front of us. What we’re trying to do here and why the topic today around balancing was so important. Last words to each of you, in terms of what we should be paying attention to. What should we be paying … You know, what’s that expression? The frog in the water. You know that you don’t notice, and the water gets hotter … that thing, you know. Or I’m going to quote every tired adage I have. How about this one? “You don’t know what you got till it’s gone”. What do we need to be watching for in on main streets that tells us, “wow, we better step in”. Because I feel like lots of people … as somebody said at the beginning, I think it was Sameer who said, “we kind of take them for granted”. And during the pandemic, we probably took them for granted less because we were constrained where we could go. And so we went up to the main street. What should each of us be watching for, that should be troubling to us that we could then, as folks get involved in, to try to bring back our main street, one particular thing we should be watching for. Taylor? Is that a tough question I put toward you?

Taylor Aikin Well, well it is. Yeah, I would pay attention to the things that have stood the test of time. As we both react to and anticipate that evolution, I would pay attention to the things that don’t change. And assess whether the things that have endured are, helping us or hurting us, and then really advocating for the preservation of the things that help.

Mary W Rowe Oh, that’s a very interesting question. So start paying attention to what’s not changing. And is that a good thing or a bad thing? Mukhtar … One thing. What should we be watching for?

Mukhtar Latif I think all these delivery services that we’ve seen, the online shopping, the Uber Eats … all the food delivery companies, I mean, people are finding less and less reason to go out, and hit the main streets, and I think that’s going to be a huge challenge. And again, we’ve seen in the UK that a lot of the main streets turn into fast food restaurants because that’s something that keeps going up as opposed to the mix and diversity that you want to see.

Mary W Rowe Yes, I hear you. So think twice before you order your food delivery. And second thing, start watching to see, as you suggest, are there particular tenant mixes that are changing, that you can visibly see? Sameer.

Sameer Patel I think we need to protect retail. So … When we used to have protection of employment lands a decade ago or two decades ago …

Mary W Rowe You want to do that? You want to protect ground floor retail?

Sameer Patel I think so, because we’re going to lose it. And it’s … all of the evolution that’s happened, and changes were okay up till now because we still had the physical, the same amount of retail. Now we’re starting to lose that retail and once it’s gone, we can’t bring it back on main streets.

Mary W Rowe Oh interesting. So we would go from historic districts or different kinds of zoning constraints to actually protecting local retail. Figure that out. Municipal, zoning experts and planners on the chat start thinking about that. How could we do it? Could we preserve it? Last word to you, Anyika.

Anyika Mark Yeah, I would say, you know, I would say displacement. I think it’s definitely gradual, but like you folks were saying … We take it for granted. And so when you see, you know, one of your favorite places in your neighborhood leave, understand that it is a part of something. It is not just a singular thing. And so start getting involved from that moment. And community ownership models, while of course complex and very nuanced per community, can always be something that you engage in, even … maybe there might be one in your community right now that you can be involved in their membership. Or maybe it’s something that you want to do as a community and get started that there are commercial land trust, frameworks and  blueprints out there. So that’s what I would say.

Mary W Rowe You know, I always want to …  We always say at CityTalk, this isn’t the end of the conversation. It’s just the beginning. And what we need to be doing is trying some stuff. So go out into your main street, knock on some doors, spend some dough and talk to the person behind the counter and try to understand who owns it, what are the challenges they’re experiencing? What are they … What’s above them? What would they like to be doing? Let’s start engaging in our main streets because we own them. They are us. They are part of urbanism. Thank you so much for joining us. Sameer and Anyika, Taylor and Mukhtar, wonderful to have you. And this conversation never gets old. You know, it’s a basic unit of how we all live. Small town, big city. Go to your main street. We’re taking a couple of weeks off, but we’ll be back at the end of October for another session that I won’t be here for because I’m going to be away, but it’s going to be on “what’s the big deal?” and it’s going to talk about infrastructure. And as you know, we believe main streets are infrastructure too. On December 5th, the summit … CUI … Come to Ottawa, be with us December 5/6 about what the challenge looks like across this country for an enormous infrastructure deficit. It’s not going to be depressing. It’s going to be hopeful. We’re going to talk about how we invest in the infrastructure in our places, including our main streets. Thanks again for joining us on CityTalk. Have a great day. Great to see you guys.