A Hamilton city councillor says a “combined effort” from city staff over a number of years is the reason employment numbers in Hamilton’s downtown core continue to rise while office vacancy rates decline.
Ward 2 Coun. Jason Farr — who represents a large portion of the areas studied in a new economic development report — says the implementation of downtown incentives in 2011 has been key to these changes in the downtown core.
The 2019 Downtown Office Vacancy and Employment Survey, set to be presented before city council on Wednesday, shows that more than 26,000 people work in the downtown area, with more than 18,000 going to full-time jobs in the core.
“For a long time, I was saying we have 25,000 people coming to downtown every day to work. It’s actually 26,305 now,” Farr told Global News.
The report, which surveyed 2,233 properties, reveals a 0.7 per cent increase, or 186 more jobs, in the downtown compared to the 2018 survey.
Government workers represented the largest group working in the downtown area with 7,355 employed at public administration jobs.
Accommodation and food services saw a significant decline, as about 850 jobs in that sector left the downtown core for other spaces within Hamilton.
Farr admits the caveat to having so many government jobs in the downtown area means less will be collected in property taxes by the city since government posts don’t pay such taxes.
“Probably, statistically, we’re right at par with most major cities in Canada in terms of the government jobs,” Farr said.
“The one thing that we can be assured of is most of those jobs are good-paying jobs. I’m proud of that from a municipal level, provincial level and federal level.”
Meanwhile, the vacancy rate of downtown office space has continued to decline year over year since 2015, even with just over 280,000 square feet added to available inventory since the 2018 survey.
The latest numbers have the vacancy rate down to 11.9 per cent, the lowest since the survey started in 2011.
“We’re starting to see, obviously, the benefits of reducing development charges to inspire growth,” said Farr who credits the implementation of two Community Improvement Plans in 2011 and 2016 for the revitalization of the survey area.
“Anybody who’s been down there lately can understand, especially down along James Street, down through that quarter, there’s an awful lot of renovation and effective reuse of a lot of those buildings now.”
The survey also reveals the number of vacant and occupied commercial and office units with direct access from the street. That portion also saw a decline in vacancy by about 0.5 per cent year over year to 10.4 per cent.
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