Downtown Montreal is picking back up, but it's still not what it used to be: report

Things are slowly looking up for Montreal’s downtown.

 A City Centre Report shows foot traffic is up and more stores have opened – but the downtown core is still not quite back to pre-pandemic levels with office workers.

“What changed is that we got hit by a pandemic, and everybody realized that we really took downtown for granted for a very long time,” said Glenn Castanheira, with business development group Montreal centre-ville.

Thanks to its universities, dynamic economy, restaurants and nightlife, it was a sure bet Montreal would be back on the map.

 “We’re not Toronto, we don’t only rely on finance. We’re not Edmonton, we don’t only rely on natural resources. We’re extremely diversified,” said Castanheira.

 The challenge, though, is attracting office workers. Prior to the pandemic, the office vacancy rate was 10 per cent – it’s now about 17 per cent.

 Companies are hesitant to rent downtown office space, said Luciano D'Iorio, a real estate agent with CDNGLOBAL.

 “What I’m seeing is a lot of short-term leases, a lot of indecision, a lot of trying to buy time because employers are just not sure of what their employees want,” said D'Iorio.

The newly formed Alliance for downtown Montreal -- which includes local, provincial and federal politicians -- hopes, by improving the downtown experience, it will attract more workers back.

Among its initiatives, it’s planning to make downtown cleaner – and brighter.

 As of this fall, it will illuminate three heritage sites, and is also planning more promotions for life downtown

“It is useless, even futile, to force people to come back to work if we’re not ready to give them a better experience,” said Castanheira.

Even though the success of many downtown businesses depends on office workers, Economy Minister Pierre Fitzgibbon favours this approach instead of the one used by Elon Musk, who is forcing his employees back to the office.

 “This is not part of the values of Quebecers,” said Fitzgibbon.

Downtown merchants say they’re still relatively lucky, pointing out that while in Montreal the office availability rate is almost 50 per cent higher than before the pandemic, in both Toronto and Vancouver that rate is more than 200 per cent.