Downtown Oshawa is looking up

Though transition has been slow, signs point to a business and entertainment revival.

Oshawa’s downtown is area in transition, where boarded-up buildings and empty storefronts share street space with busy upscale restaurants and ambitious restoration projects. Decay and degeneration is giving way to new development and a vibrancy not seen since the ’70s.

The signs are everywhere. Among them:

• The year-and-a-half-old General Motors Centre for sports and entertainment.
• Construction of a new courthouse.
• Restoration of the 1919 Regent Theatre, set to reopen this fall for live theatre and concerts.
• The University of Ontario Institute of Technology’s plans to move its faculty of education to a former bank building next month.
• A just-announced $45 million hotel and conference centre.

The conference centre, to be built on a parking lot at Queen’s Market Square, is “very significant,” says Councillor Louise Parkes, who landed the deal by taking the developer on a tour “to show them we were serious about downtown.” “This may be the domino that makes the rest fall into place,” says Parkes, chair of the development services committee.

It’s a viewpoint challenged by GM’s recently announced plan to close the truck plant in the city, throwing thousands of people out of work.

Last month’s year-to-date total of more than $242 million for building permits was the strongest in Oshawa’s history, Parkes notes. “We are booming.”

But more than that, “we’re bringing high-quality businesses back into downtown.”

Joe Bhola represents the new face of downtown Oshawa. Attracted by the city’s efforts to revive it and “so many offices with working women,” he and his wife Anjali opened Rheanna on Simcoe St. S. eight months ago. Selling high-end European fashions and jewellery, the boutique has been well-received since being officially opened by Mayor John Gray, Bhola says.

“We’re doing well. There’s a good office crowd and good traffic here. That’s why I came ““ I love this area.”

The Bholas’ store is what downtown development officer David Tuley calls the “authentic environments” where today’s consumers want to shop and socialize. That’s one of the driving forces behind the new wave of business and commerce in the heart of the city, he says.

Like other urban centres, Oshawa fell victim to big box stores and indoor malls that pulled retailers out to the suburbs, says Tuley, who was hired two years ago to stickhandle the city’s revitalization plan developed in 2005.

Proof of its turnaround is in the numbers: the commercial vacancy rate that was 28.6 per cent in 1996 now sits at 14.5 per cent. A year ago, there was more than 200,000 square feet of large office space sitting empty; today it’s down to 40,000.

“It’s been amazing,” says Tuley. “It’s an excellent sign.” He thinks it’s Oshawa’s turn to blossom.

“The last bastion of development in the west GTA was Burlington. We’re the final frontier, the largest urban downtown in the north and east GTA. We’re still affordable and it’s easy to come in and get your piece of the action. Compared to the rest of the GTA, we’re kind of a golden nugget.”