Cambridge allocates $35M for downtown makeovers

Cambridge city council voted unanimously in favour of creating a $35 million fund to help improve the city's three core areas.

Over the next decade, the core areas transformation fund will be used for projects that will stimulate growth and investment in the Galt, Hespeler and Preston downtowns.

"We want to make sure that we can foster vibrant downtown communities with a really high quality of life," Cambridge Mayor Kathryn McGarry said in an interview Wednesday. Council voted in favour of the staff recommendation Tuesday night.

The city plans to develop place-making projects and partnerships with local businesses and organizations, with the goal of attracting more people to live and work in the downtown core.

Funding 5 key areas

The plan is based on five key areas of investment; one of which is creating opportunities for post-secondary institutions to expand into Cambridge.

"We have had some vacant or underdeveloped or vulnerable areas," McGarry said. "We know that having students downtown in any municipality really helps benefit the economy and that vibrancy of student life really generates excitement in those core areas."

The remaining areas of focus for the fund are: encouraging business development, acquiring more land, enhancing art and culture projects and reviewing how community services are currently offered.

Kitchener as a case study

McGarry points to Kitchener as an example of why investing in a downtown core is beneficial. In 2004, Kitchener started an economic development investment fund to revitalize the downtown core. Former mayor Carl Zehr said their focus was to create an "education and knowledge creation cluster" in the core.

"We had no idea at the time how that money that we were investing in that would actually be the tipping point to getting things going," he said during an interview with CBC Kitchener-Waterloo in January 2018.

Change happened quickly. Talks with the universities led to the School of Social Work from Wilfrid Laurier University and the School of Pharmacy at University of Waterloo setting up shop downtown. After the schools put their foot on the ground, the tech companies started moving to the core.

McGarry says they hope to see similar strides in Cambridge.

"Kitchener had invested even more in their downtown area and it really transformed that core into a vibrant place where people want to be," she said. "That brings people together."

McGarry says the next few months will be focused on developing the criteria for the fund.

"It's not going to be there to fund projects already underway. These will be transformational projects," she said, such as strategic land acquisitions.

To create the core areas transformation fund, an initial sum of $20 million will be transferred from the city's economic development reserve fund. McGarry said there are no current plans to generate revenue for the fund by increasing taxes.