Urban Vitality

There has been much momentum occurring in our downtown as of late. The key to making a downtown a success is ‘urban vitality’ 24-7, 365 days a year, and Parmasters Kitchener-Waterloo will help contribute to the vitality of Kitchener’s downtown.

A downtown is a key identifier to a community. Downtowns help define and characterize a community. Our downtown is home to almost 12,000 employees, 691 businesses and 85 restaurants. Over the last year our downtown has also seen a decrease in the apartment vacancy rate and a decrease in the commercial vacancy rate. A downtown’s uniqueness, distinctiveness and vitality are what attract residents and visitors to live, work and play. Last year Kitchener’s downtown saw almost 400,000 people come to the downtown for events and festivals.

What will help Kitchener’s downtown to continue to prosper over the next few years will be more people moving into the core. This in turn will generate the need for more businesses and services in our downtown. Instead of activity coming to a halt at 5 pm when workers leave the downtown for their homes in the suburbs, the residents living in the downtown and the businesses will contribute to a ‘vitality’ after 5 pm. The ‘vitality’ will in turn contribute to the perception that downtown is a safe environment. Unfortunately, there are many in our community that feel downtown as it exists now is not a safe place to be after 5 pm. They couldn’t be more wrong! ‘Urban Vitality’ after 5 pm will help change their perception.

For the next few months, our downtown will be very fortunate to have four Downtown Ambassadors whose job will be to help create a friendly, helpful and safe environment in our downtown. They will promote and respond to inquiries on downtown activities, events and businesses, support outreach workers in the downtown area as needed, provide guided tours for groups visiting the downtown or new hires in downtown businesses and monitor and report to by-law, security or police any negative activities as required. They will be working two shifts, 10 am to 6 pm and 3pm to 11 pm six days of the week. Our Ambassadors will be easily recognizable in their green shirts and will be a welcome addition to our downtown.

Parmasters Kitchener-Waterloo can’t wait to open its doors in Kitchener’s downtown and contribute to building ‘Urban Vitality’.