29.6% office vacancy~130 empty storefrontsa $48M plan with no money attached
This page is an options brief. It walks through the main ways cities try to revive a struggling downtown: the best evidence for and against each one, what it cost where it was actually tried, and what a London-sized version would likely cost, with the math shown, or honestly marked as not derivable. It exists so voters can demand costed answers instead of slogans.
It is not a plan, and it recommends nothing. Every option gets the same treatment: evidence for, evidence against, real costs, and who actually holds the power to decide. Where a tool is legally outside council's reach (like a storefront vacancy tax) or outside its control (like police deployment), the page says so.
Research was completed July 4, 2026, and every claim links to a source that loads and says what's claimed. The downtown office vacancy figures were refreshed on August 2, 2026 when CBRE published its numbers for April through June 2026.
READ EVERY NUMBER HERE WITH THIS
The whole plan to fix downtown costs about $48M, and has no money attached until at least the 2028 budget, so the first real dollar belongs to the council elected this October.
THE BASELINE
The honest numbers
Where London actually stands, every figure linked to its source.
The headline number: empty offices
As of June 30, 2026, 29.6% of downtown office space sits empty. Nearly 3 in 10 downtown offices have nobody in them. That is down from 31.5% three months earlier, the biggest three month drop of any downtown in Canada. About 82,000 sq ft more downtown office space got filled than emptied over those three months, the best three month gain in nearly ten years. Both halves of that are true at once: the trend finally turned, and the hole is still enormous. CBRE, London Office Figures Q2 2026 ↗
How it got here: 13.6% empty in 2019, 27.3% by the autumn of 2023, 31.4% a year after that, 30.6% by the autumn of 2025, 31.5% at the end of 2025 and again through the first three months of 2026, then 29.6% by June 2026. It did not climb every year, so "downtown keeps emptying" was never quite right, and it is wrong now. CBC ↗
Through March 2026, London had the emptiest downtown offices of any major Canadian city CBRE tracks. That is no longer true. The Q2 2026 figures put London's core below Waterloo Region, where Kitchener's core is 42.1% empty. If a leaflet this fall says "highest in Canada," it was accurate through the spring and has since gone out of date. CBRE, Waterloo Region Office Figures Q2 2026 ↗
Watch which number gets quoted at you. 25.0% is the whole city, downtown offices and suburban offices together, and the suburbs are only 12.0% empty. Downtown on its own is 29.6%. The two got mixed up in coverage the week the figures came out, so ask which one a candidate means. CBRE, London Office Figures Q2 2026 ↗
The pain sits in the older Class B and C buildings. The best downtown space, Class A, is 19.8% empty. CBC ↗
Downtown holds about 4.4 million sq ft of office space, more than 75% of the city's total, so what happens downtown is the citywide office story. At 29.6%, that leaves roughly 1.3 million sq ft sitting empty (our arithmetic from CBRE's two figures). CBRE, London Office Figures Q2 2026 ↗
These are the figures for April through June 2026. CBRE publishes the next set in mid October, days before the October 26 vote, so the number on this page can change once more before you cast a ballot. CBRE, London Office Figures Q2 2026 ↗
DOWNTOWN OFFICE VACANCY: TO SCALE
201913.6%
Q3 202431.4%
Q4 202531.5%
Q1 202631.5%
Q2 202629.6%
One axis: downtown office vacancy %. Every bar is London's core. Figures through Q4 2025 via CBC citing CBRE; Q1 and Q2 2026 via CBRE directly. Note the line does not only go up. CBRE, London Office Figures Q2 2026 ↗
Storefronts and who lives downtown
17% of downtown commercial retail spaces sat empty as of mid-2025: about 350,000 sq ft and roughly 130 empty storefronts out of 660-plus, mostly on Richmond, Dundas and Wellington. CBC ↗
A 2023 staff report measured ground-floor retail vacancy at 18% using a different counting method, so "roughly flat" is the honest trend, not "improved." The same report found one owner, Farhi Holdings, held 59% of vacant downtown properties. CBC ↗
The number running the other way: downtown's residential population grew to 11,700-plus in 2025 from about 9,000 in 2021, up 29% in five years versus 18% citywide. And 1,500-plus housing units were permitted downtown over 2021–2025, roughly 375 a year (derived from that total). Downtown Reimagined plan (PDF) ↗
EMPTY, BY TYPE: TO SCALE
Offices29.6%
Storefronts17%
Office space and street-level storefronts are different problems with different fixes, counted separately by different people. Offices as of June 2026 (CBRE); storefronts as of mid-2025 (Tate Research, via the city's downtown plan). CBC ↗
BOTH TRUE AT ONCE
29.6%
of downtown offices sit empty as of June 2026, down from 31.5% but still nearly 3 in 10
+29%
downtown residents since 2021, to 11,700-plus, outpacing the 18% citywide
Downtown Reimagined: $48M, no money attached
The city's new 10-year downtown plan (June 2026) contains 58 actions and four "Big Moves": a dedicated Downtown Office with a permits-and-events concierge, upgraded public spaces, a "River District" connecting downtown to the Thames, and building on the UNESCO City of Music designation. Downtown Reimagined plan (PDF) ↗
The staff report's own words: implementing all actions costs "approximately $48 million," and "there are no immediate operating or capital budget impacts associated with this report." Funding is expected through the 2028, 2032 and 2036 budget cycles, so the $48M has no money attached yet, and the first real money decision belongs to the council elected this October. SPPC staff report (PDF) ↗
What actually got voted: committee received the plan, moved ahead only on actions that fit inside existing budgets, and pushed everything needing new money to the 2028–2031 budget. Skeptics on council said drug use and homelessness had to be addressed first; the development industry and downtown BIA backed the plan. CBC ↗
Feeling safe versus reported crime
Official reported crime is well below 2019 but turned up last year: the London area (CMA) Crime Severity Index was 66.0 in 2025, up 8% from 2024 and its first rise since 2021, against a national index of 75.0 (down 5%). London is still 12% below its own 2019 level, mostly on non-violent crime (23% below 2019); violent crime severity (79.6 in 2025) is about 24% above 2019. London police recorded shootings down 48% (27 to 14) in 2024. StatCan ↗
Perception hasn't moved with it: the Nanos-run Community Voices survey scored "London as a safe place to live" at 6.4/10, unchanged from 2023, with 44% naming homelessness the top issue. The downtown plan's engagement found safety and visible drug use coming up again and again as reasons people avoid the core. CBC ↗
No downtown-specific public crime numbers exist. Neither London police nor Statistics Canada publishes a downtown-level breakdown, so any candidate claim about "downtown crime rates" has no official public source. A candidate quoting only perception, or only the falling index, is giving half the picture. LPS annual report ↗
What London already runs and built
London already runs a full menu of downtown incentives through its Community Improvement Plan: façade loans (50% up to $50,000), building-code upgrade loans (up to $200,000), a redevelopment tax grant, 100% rebates on residential development charges, an office-to-residential grant of up to $35,000 per unit, and a fit-out grant for vacant storefronts (50% up to $50,000, about $975,000 a year). city incentives page ↗
On transit: the BRT Downtown Loop was completed in 2024 (King, Queens, Wellington, Ridout, four stops). What council killed in 2019 were the north ($147M, failed 5–8) and west ($72M) legs. CBC ↗
The East London Link and Wellington Gateway are still under construction; the city expects the East London Link's final Dundas Street phase to run to about 2028 (Phase 5 notice, March 2026) and Wellington Gateway full service in late 2028. london.ca/rapidtransit ↗
The last big public-space bet: Dundas Place cost the city about $16M (roughly $27M all-in with utility work) and opened December 2019, with 2017 projections of over $1M a year to operate. Businesses reported sales down 25–30% during construction. No formal evaluation of what it delivered was ever published, and the current budget for programming the street isn't public either. CBC ↗
THE CHOICES
The option space
What cities try for this. Evidence for, evidence against, real costs, and who actually decides, for every option, identically. We don't pick one. That's the candidates' job.
Pay to turn offices into homes
Grants per unit or per square foot that make converting empty offices into apartments financially worth a developer's while. London already runs one; Calgary runs the country's biggest.
■ CITY DECIDES■ COSTED
THE EVIDENCE, THE COSTS, WHO DECIDES▾
EVIDENCE FOR
In Calgary, developer demand beat the money: intake was paused in 2023 because applications outran the fund, and the program counts 21 projects, 2.68 million sq ft converting, and 2,667 homes in the pipeline. City of Calgary ↗
The trend is national: a record seven conversion projects removed roughly 1.5 million sq ft of office space in Q1 2026 alone, including one London project. CBRE ↗
London's program has real uptake: about $3.8M of its $10M committed across 109 approved units, including 195 Dufferin (94 units, 40% affordable), with the first completed conversion at 376 Richmond St. city release ↗
EVIDENCE AGAINST / LIMITS
The vacancy math is humbling: CBRE's own analysis found Calgary's downtown vacancy "would only be a percentage point higher if the program didn't exist," after more than $200M of city money. CBRE's Alberta chair: "If you gauge... the success of the program today, no, it hasn't been good." CBC ↗
Only a minority of buildings physically work: Gensler, after scoring 1,300-plus North American buildings, found only about 25% suitable for conversion. Cost overruns are real. One Calgary heritage conversion roughly doubled in cost, and three early projects pulled out. Gensler ↗
London's own caveats: as of June 2025, none of the grant-funded units had opened; funded units are not required to be affordable; and downtown vacancy rose for years after the program launched, from 27.3% to 31.5%, before turning down to 29.6% in the spring of 2026. Whether the subsidy deserves the credit for that turn is genuinely contested, and CBRE's own read of a much bigger program in Calgary was that conversions barely moved the vacancy rate. CBC ↗
WHAT IT COST ELSEWHERE
Calgary: up to $75/sq ft (max $15M per property); over $200M of city money invested to date per the mayor, about $67,000–$70,000 of public money per pipeline home (derived: $200M ÷ ~3,000 homes). CBC ↗
London: $35,000 per unit base (raised from $28,000 in July 2024), stackable to about $50,000 with a separate ~$45,000-per-affordable-unit incentive; the $10M pot is carved out of London's $74M federal Housing Accelerator money. city release ↗
AT LONDON'S SCALE: ARITHMETIC SHOWN
London's current pot: $10M ÷ $35,000 per unit ≈ 285 units, the city's stated target. A Calgary-style program on all ~1.3 million vacant sq ft at $75/sq ft ≈ $97.5M; applying Gensler's 25%-convertible finding, ~325,000 sq ft × $75 ≈ $24.4M, yielding roughly 325 homes at Calgary's observed ~1,000 sq ft of office per home. The ~1.3 million sq ft is our arithmetic: 29.6% of downtown's roughly 4.4 million sq ft, both figures from CBRE's Q2 2026 London report. city release ↗
■ CITY DECIDESCouncil designs and votes the incentive through its Community Improvement Plan; the current $10M is federal money, but going beyond it means property-tax dollars or new senior-government funds.
Foot patrols, cameras, and clean teams
Four different tools with very different evidence behind them: dedicated police foot patrols (London has a 22-member downtown unit), police-plus-health co-response teams (COAST), surveillance cameras (17 downtown as of 2018), and BIA clean-team or ambassador programs.
■ CITY DECIDES■ COSTED
THE EVIDENCE, THE COSTS, WHO DECIDES▾
EVIDENCE FOR
Update, July 2026: city hall may get a patrol lever of its own. An internal report recommends the city hire special constables under municipal direction to fill the enforcement gap around public spaces, and a council committee approved studying 11 of them, with the motion going to full council July 21. Unlike police deployment, these would answer to city hall, so this is the one boots-on-the-street tool a council candidate could actually promise to direct. CBC — special constables study (July 2026) ↗
The best foot-patrol evidence is real: the Philadelphia Foot Patrol Experiment (a randomized trial across 120 violent-crime hotspots) found a 23% relative reduction in reported violent crime while officers were out walking. DOJ CrimeSolutions ↗
Co-response teams clearly divert calls: COAST handles 100–150 client calls a month that would otherwise need a patrol response, per Carleton University's early evaluation; Toronto's crisis service resolved 78% of 911-sourced calls with no police involvement in its first six months. CBC ↗
CCTV works in the right settings: a 40-year systematic review of 80 evaluations found a ~13% overall crime reduction, strongest in parking lots and property crime, and only for actively monitored systems. systematic review ↗
EVIDENCE AGAINST / LIMITS
Foot-patrol effects fade: the same registry records no significant difference once officers withdrew, with deterrence decaying during deployment and crime measurably pushed to nearby blocks. London's own unit supervisor conceded displacement "could very well happen." DOJ CrimeSolutions ↗
For co-response, the systematic-review literature (26 studies) finds a "lack of evidence to evaluate effectiveness" beyond call diversion, no rigorous evidence that it reduces downtown reported crime or how safe people say they feel. academic review ↗
CCTV's effects on violent street crime are weak, passive systems show no significant effect, and no verified evidence was found that cameras make people feel safer. Clean-team and ambassador claims are almost entirely self-reported. No rigorous Canadian evaluation exists. systematic review ↗
WHAT IT COST ELSEWHERE
Winnipeg's downtown ambassador partnership took a $5M initial provincial investment plus $3.6M more in 2022. A serious 24/7 operation in a mid-size downtown runs millions a year, not hundreds of thousands. CBC ↗
London's own anchors: 17 cameras cost about $70,000 a year to run as of 2018 (~$4,000 per camera, derived); no line-item cost for the 22-member foot patrol unit or COAST's total budget has ever been published. Nearby: the Old East Village BIA spends about $60,000 a year on graffiti cleanup, a third of its whole budget. Global News ↗
AT LONDON'S SCALE: ARITHMETIC SHOWN
The proposal itself is costed: the 11-member special constable program could run just over $2 million a year, against the $2.94 million a year the city already pays for contracted security. That's the real number for the specific July 2026 city-hall proposal. Salary floor only, for comparison: an LPS first-class constable makes $120,445 base, so ten additional dedicated core officers ≈ 10 × $120,445 ≈ $1.2M a year minimum, before benefits, supervision and equipment, which have no citable figure — a different, cheaper body under a different chain of command. The harder limit on that police-side option: under Ontario's policing law, council sets only the total police budget and cannot direct deployment; the board and chief decide where officers go. The special constables proposal is different precisely because it answers to city hall, not the board. CBC — special constables study (July 2026) ↗
■ CITY DECIDESCouncil votes the global police budget, CCTV, and BIA top-ups, but it legally cannot direct police deployment, so "more foot patrols" is a promise council can fund, not order.
Tax or fill the empty buildings
Tools aimed at the empty buildings themselves: a residential vacant-home tax (now legal for London to adopt), a storefront vacancy tax (not legal without provincial change), a vacant-building registry that charges an annual fee for sitting empty (legal today, and reaches commercial buildings, but London's registry does not do this), the existing A-35 inspection registry, and pop-up programs in empty storefronts.
□ SHARED: CITY + PROVINCE□ COST NOT DERIVABLE
THE EVIDENCE, THE COSTS, WHO DECIDES▾
EVIDENCE FOR
Since March 27, 2024, Ontario lets every single- and upper-tier municipality adopt a vacant-home tax. It is now purely a council choice, and Toronto, Ottawa, Hamilton, Windsor and Sault Ste. Marie already run programs. Ontario ↗
London has history with the reverse incentive: until 2019 the city actually paid commercial landlords a 30% tax rebate on vacant space (about $1.8M a year), and council phased it out over the downtown business association's objection. CBC ↗
The registry lever already exists, but it charges for inspections, not for sitting empty: By-law A-35 lets an officer put a building vacant 30-plus days on an Inspection Registry, and only where the officer also believes it is a safety risk or public nuisance. The owner then pays the resulting inspection fees, and contravening the by-law carries a fine of up to $5,000 per day. There is no registration fee and no annual vacancy fee in A-35 or anywhere in the city's 2026 Fees and Charges schedule. The fire department's monthly list ran to 100-plus vacant buildings citywide in 2020. city bylaw ↗
Two Ontario cities already charge an annual fee for a building sitting empty, and they did it without asking the province. St. Catharines charges a $382.45 one-time administrative fee plus an $874.15 annual registration fee once a building has been vacant 30 days; its by-law covers non-residential buildings, and the city says the fees 'act as an impetus for owners to fill vacant buildings, improving housing and commercial building supply.' Hamilton runs a comparable registry at roughly $961 a year after a $340 initial fee. This is a fee for cost recovery, not a tax, which is exactly why it needs no provincial permission where a vacancy tax would. Neither fee escalates the longer a building stays empty. Whether London adopts one is a council decision, not a Queen's Park one. St. Catharines by-law (archived) ↗
Hamilton's version carries the harder penalty, and it reaches companies. Under its Vacant Building Registry By-law 17-127, an owner who fails to register a vacant building faces a fine of up to $10,000 on a first conviction and $25,000 on any later one, and where the owner is a corporation those maximums rise to $50,000 and $100,000. Registration also triggers four exterior inspections a year. The honest limit, and it matters: the fine punishes not registering, not sitting empty. An owner who registers, pays, and keeps the building in order owes nothing more, the same way London's $5,000-a-day maximum under A-35 attaches to breaking the by-law rather than to the emptiness itself. Hamilton By-law 17-127 ↗
One more lever council already holds, usable now without a new by-law, a provincial change, or a fresh staff report: the Property Standards By-law (CP-24) lets by-law officers order an owner to repair, maintain, or secure a neglected or vacant building to a minimum standard, enforced through Building Code Act offences and administrative fines, running alongside the A-35 registry above. The honest limit: it bites on a building's condition and security, not on whether it sits empty, so it reaches a derelict or unsecured vacant building today, but not a well-kept one. city bylaw ↗
EVIDENCE AGAINST / LIMITS
The tool most candidates reach for is one council doesn't have: a storefront vacancy tax has no legal basis in Ontario law. Toronto's own study concluded it would need a change in provincial law, and London councillors have said the same on the record. CBC ↗
A residential vacant-home tax taxes empty homes. It does not touch empty offices or storefronts, which are downtown's actual problem. And pop-up programs need landlords to say yes: one owner held 59% of vacant downtown properties in 2023, and the international model (Renew Newcastle) is self-reported advocacy with no independent evaluation. CBC ↗
The registry-fee lever is real but small, and its ceiling is untested. St. Catharines' $874.15 a year is a rounding error against the carrying cost of a downtown office tower, and neither that fee nor Hamilton's rises the longer a building sits empty. The reason the fee is lawful is that it recovers the city's monitoring costs rather than raising revenue, so a fee set high enough to genuinely pressure a speculator could be challenged as a disguised tax. No source we found has tested where that line sits, and no Ontario registry fee appears to have been challenged in court. Municipal Act, 2001 (fee power, s.391) ↗
On the property-tax side, London has already used what it has. Ontario's subclass provision only allows tax rate reductions, so a city can end a vacant-property discount and make vacant commercial pay the full occupied rate, but it cannot charge vacant commercial more than an occupied building. Full parity is the legal ceiling. Municipal Act, 2001 (s.313, prescribed subclass tax reductions) ↗
WHAT IT COST ELSEWHERE
Toronto's residential vacant-home tax raises revenue and puts modest pressure on owners to rent or sell; the commercial version is untested in Ontario because it isn't legal. London's nearest costed storefront tool is the fit-out grant at roughly $975,000 a year. CBC ↗
AT LONDON'S SCALE: NOT DERIVABLE FROM PUBLIC DATA
Not derivable. Vacant-home-tax revenue depends on the rate and uptake council would set, no current registry count is published, and a bigger pop-up program has no published unit costs. What is certain: the only storefront tools council holds today are the registry, fines, fit-out grants, and the expired-rebate history. A storefront vacancy tax requires Queen's Park first.
□ SHARED: CITY + PROVINCEA residential vacant-home tax is council's alone to adopt since March 2024; a storefront vacancy tax requires provincial legislation, so a candidate promising one is really promising a lobbying campaign. Council also already holds condition-and-safety levers it can use now: the Property Standards By-law, the A-35 vacant-building registry, and the upkeep clauses in the Business Licensing By-law, though these govern how a building is kept, not whether it sits empty.
More events and street life
Filling the core with markets, music, festivals and street events to drive foot traffic and change perception. Dundas Place was built as the stage; the BIA reports 800-plus events a year drawing about 2 million visitors (BIA-sourced figures).
■ CITY DECIDES■ COSTED
THE EVIDENCE, THE COSTS, WHO DECIDES▾
EVIDENCE FOR
Events are the core's strongest existing asset on the available data: 800-plus events a year and roughly 2 million visitors (BIA-reported), with a daytime population around 43,000. Downtown Reimagined plan (PDF) ↗
The city already runs weekly summer programming on Dundas Place (salsa, jazz, art walks), and the downtown plan's Big Move 4 doubles down through the UNESCO City of Music designation. city release ↗
EVIDENCE AGAINST / LIMITS
This is the weakest evidence base of all six options: no attendance figures for any Dundas Place event are published, and no evaluation links London's event spending to fuller storefronts or safety outcomes. The claims are mostly organizers reporting their own vibrancy. Downtown Reimagined plan (PDF) ↗
Events don't touch the structural problem, which is empty offices; the plan itself pairs events with conversion and housing for that reason. And the cautionary tale is local: Dundas Place businesses reported sales down 25–30% during construction, and six years after opening the core still needed a rescue plan. CBC ↗
WHAT IT COST ELSEWHERE
Hamilton's downtown placemaking grant pays $500–$5,000 per one-day event and up to $15,000 per series, a rare published price list. London's only public figures are the 2017 Dundas Place projections: over $1M a year all-in ($850,000 operations, $200,000 security). City of Hamilton ↗
AT LONDON'S SCALE: ARITHMETIC SHOWN
A Hamilton-style micro-grant stream funding 50 events a year at the $5,000 cap ≈ $250,000 a year (derived from Hamilton's posted rates). A full events strategy's cost is not derivable. The essential missing number is London's own current spend, which no candidate or voter can currently look up. City of Hamilton ↗
■ CITY DECIDESCouncil votes city programming budgets and Dundas Place operations directly; the BIA levy and sponsors carry the rest.
Bring in a big institution
Using a university or college campus, civic building, or health facility to guarantee daily foot traffic that has to show up, the strategy behind Fanshawe's three downtown buildings.
■ CITY DECIDES□ COST NOT DERIVABLE
THE EVIDENCE, THE COSTS, WHO DECIDES▾
EVIDENCE FOR
Brantford is the strongest documented Canadian downtown turnaround built on an anchor: from 39 Wilfrid Laurier students in 1999 to about 2,700 by 2012 across 20-plus downtown buildings, with the city's opening move costing just $1.4M. Globe and Mail ↗
London's own precedent delivered bodies: 130 Dundas opened in 2018 with 1,600 students after the city committed $9M over 10 years, a vote that failed 7–7 before passing 8–7. Global News ↗
Anchors create daily foot traffic that events can't: Hamilton's $84.6M McMaster downtown health campus (city share $20M) puts roughly 4,000 students a year through the core. CBC ↗
EVIDENCE AGAINST / LIMITS
It takes a decade-plus to reach critical mass, with heritage-demolition and displacement fights along the way. Brantford levelled a historic block, and Kitchener's $65.1M downtown city hall sent displaced tenants to the OMB. Globe and Mail ↗
London has already played this card twice, with Fanshawe and the arena/market cluster: over $100M of city money into the core across two decades, per a sitting councillor, and vacancy still hit records. An anchor strategy now means naming a new tenant of scale. None is proposed in any public document. CBC ↗
WHAT IT COST ELSEWHERE
The verified range of city contributions in comparable moves: $1.4M (Brantford's library renovation) to $29M (London's 2011 Fanshawe grant), with Hamilton's $20M McMaster share between. London's one verified per-seat number: $9M ÷ 1,600 students = $5,625 of city money per student seat at 130 Dundas. Globe and Mail ↗
AT LONDON'S SCALE: NOT DERIVABLE FROM PUBLIC DATA
Not derivable. The cost depends entirely on which anchor, and no public document currently names one. The verified comparables run $1.4M to $29M in city money. The honest question is not "do anchors work" but "which institution, what ceiling, and what happens if no anchor says yes."
■ CITY DECIDESCouncil votes the capital grants (lawful only through the Community Improvement Plan or economic-development powers), but the institution itself, and usually the province, decides whether to come.
Aim for more people living downtown
Making downtown population, not office occupancy, the explicit goal, on the theory that residents keep the core busy 18 hours a day in a way offices no longer do. Downtown Reimagined floats 5,000 new units and 20,000 residents.
■ CITY DECIDES■ COSTED
THE EVIDENCE, THE COSTS, WHO DECIDES▾
EVIDENCE FOR
Downtown population is already the core's best-performing number: up 29% in five years versus 18% citywide, reaching 11,700-plus residents. Downtown Reimagined plan (PDF) ↗
The existing tools all push the same direction (conversion grants, 100% development-charge rebates, federal Housing Accelerator money), and every office floor converted also subtracts vacant square footage. city incentives page ↗
EVIDENCE AGAINST / LIMITS
Permitted is not built, and built is not occupied: none of the conversion-grant units had opened as of June 2025, and the funded units carry no affordability requirement. CBC ↗
The plan's numbers are targets to set targets, with no dates and no interim milestones, and the housing push leans on the same contested subsidy math as the conversion option. Downtown Reimagined plan (PDF) ↗
WHAT IT COST ELSEWHERE
The plan's whole $48M is the ceiling of what's currently on the table, and it is unallocated, waiting on the 2028 budget cycle. Per-unit subsidy at current rates: $35,000 city grant plus a 10-year 100% development-charge rebate whose value varies per unit. SPPC staff report (PDF) ↗
AT LONDON'S SCALE: ARITHMETIC SHOWN
The pace arithmetic voters should see: 1,500-plus units permitted over 2021–2025 ≈ 375 a year. At that pace, 5,000 units takes about 13 years, longer than the plan's 10-year horizon. Reaching 20,000 residents means adding roughly 8,300 people; at the downtown average of 1.7 persons per household, that's about 4,900 occupied units, consistent with the 5,000-unit target. All inputs from the plan; the division is ours. Downtown Reimagined plan (PDF) ↗
■ CITY DECIDESCouncil sets the targets, the CIP money, and the zoning; the private market decides whether the units actually get built.
Where this file meets the Homelessness File
The loop, stated neutrally: the plan's engagement found visible drug use and fear of crime keep people from spending time downtown, which directly affects leasing decisions and foot traffic, while official reported crime is falling. Perception of disorder chokes off the foot traffic every option above is trying to create, which is why candidates will be tempted to promise downtown revival through homelessness policy. The two files connect; they are not the same file. The full picture is at /files/homelessness/. Downtown Reimagined plan (PDF) ↗
The fight over where services go runs through both files: on November 5, 2024, council voted 9–6 that resting spaces for people experiencing homelessness not be located on the main street of any of London's five BIAs, understood to target Ark Aid's 696 Dundas space in Old East Village. CBC ↗
Business associations are meanwhile buying safety themselves: London BIAs have hired private security and say they can't keep absorbing the cost. Argyle used $125,000 in two-year city funding for a safety director, and Old East Village runs its own safety grants. CBC ↗
One attribution caution: the BIA voice in the resting-space coverage is the Old East Village BIA, not Downtown London. No direct on-record Downtown London BIA statement on the November 2024 motion was found. Its strategic plan names "safety and social challenges" as top member concerns while noting the BIA controls none of policing, housing, or health policy. Downtown London BIA plan (PDF) ↗
What to ask the candidates
Any candidate can say this issue matters. These are the questions that make them get specific. Bring them to a debate, a doorstep, or an email.
One owner holds most of the vacant downtown properties, and council can't force anyone to fill a building. What would you actually do to get those buildings back into use?
St. Catharines charges the owner of a vacant building about $874 a year, commercial buildings included, and needed no permission from the province to do it. London charges nothing for a building sitting empty. Would you bring in a fee like that, and if so, set at what?
The grant to turn empty offices into apartments has approved plenty of units but opened none. Downtown vacancy rose for years after it launched and has now started to fall. Would you keep funding it as is, change the terms, or stop it, and what result would tell you it is the grant doing the work?
You might want more police downtown, but council can't tell the police where to go. How would you actually get more officers onto those blocks?
The $48-million downtown plan isn't funded yet. What's the first piece you would pay for, and what would you cut or raise to cover it?
Dundas Place has been open for years and the city never published an evaluation of what it delivered. Would you commit to publishing one, by when, and what would it have to show for you to call it money well spent?
Council voted to keep homelessness services off business-district main streets. Would you keep that, drop it, or change it, and if not there, where should they go?
What your ward is wrestling with
This file lands differently on every street.Jump straight to your ward’s own issue list:
CLAIMS WE COULDN’T VERIFY, SO THEY’RE NOT ON THIS PAGE ▾
These circulate in coverage of this issue but could not be traced to a source that loads and says what’s claimed. We’d rather show you the gap than publish the number.
Crime Severity Index "64.3 (2023) → 56.2 (2024)" and "largest drop in Ontario": commercial-blog-only, partly contradicted by Statistics Canada; replaced site-wide with the official 61.2 / down 6% figures.
Annual cost of the LPS 22-member downtown foot patrol unit: no published figure; only base-salary arithmetic is possible.
A "fully loaded" per-officer cost (~$130,000–$150,000): estimate only; the verified base salary is $120,445–$131,285.
Downtown-specific reported-crime statistics: no public core-level dataset exists from LPS or StatCan.
Current downtown CCTV camera count and cost after the 2024 expansion: the 17-camera/$70,000 figures are 2018-vintage.
Downtown London BIA clean-team dollar spend: the BIA publishes a levy chart without numbers.
The actual current annual city spend animating Dundas Place, and attendance for any Dundas Place event: only 2017 projections are public.
Covent Garden Market operating deficit or bailout figure: none published; only a $5.7M capital repair is verified.
Core Area Action Plan "~$22M" total: the best-sourced figure is $18.9M, and no formal outcome evaluation of the plan exists.
"$10M city grant per Fanshawe campus": wrong as framed; verified: $9M over 10 years for 130 Dundas, plus a $29M 2011 grant resting on a single source.
Fanshawe student counts at 137 Dundas and 431 Richmond: never published, so no per-seat cost beyond 130 Dundas.
The 685 Richmond St conversion grant amount: the unit count (41) is verified; the dollar figure was never published.
Brantford "$130M institutional investment including $21M city": appears only in unverifiable search snippets.
Current count of buildings on the A-35 vacant-building registry: the bylaw is verified and its fee structure was checked against the 2026 Fees and Charges schedule (there is no vacancy registration fee), but the number of listed buildings is not published.
The by-law number and text of London's 2019 decision to end the vacant-commercial tax discount: the phase-out itself is verified through news coverage, but the by-law and the provincial pathway it used were not located, so this page describes what changed and not how.
Hamilton's registry fee amount: the by-law itself sets no dollar figure (s.11 leaves fees to the User Fees and Charges By-law), and the city's published figures conflict between roughly $961 a year and an older $729. The by-law's coverage of commercial buildings, by contrast, is established: it never uses the words commercial, industrial or residential, defines a building tenure-neutrally, exempts non-dwelling farm buildings (implying non-dwelling non-farm buildings are covered), and deems a building vacant once its owner applies for the Vacant Unit Rebate, which only applied to commercial and industrial properties.
How high a vacant-building registry fee can go before it stops being lawful cost recovery and becomes a tax the province would have to authorize: no source examined this, and no Ontario registry fee appears to have been challenged in court. This is the real ceiling on the lever and it is unmapped.
Whether a Business Improvement Area levy reaches vacant commercial units, and at what rate: not researched.
Whether any Ontario municipality has enforced a vacancy-triggered demolition order against a sound but empty commercial building: Windsor's 2025 property-standards by-law appears to allow it, but no instance of use, and no court or committee test of the power, was found.