OPINION | Downtown is the heart of Yellowknife, people just need to care about it

I love our downtown. It's important to everyone in Yellowknife, whether they realize it or not. Many people I talk to shrug their shoulders or are dismissive about downtown, but it's the heart of our community and the most financially productive area of our city, which makes your suburban lifestyle possible.

It's also the centre of our social issues. We are making progress on that. Programs like the sobering and day shelter, Housing First and Street Outreach are seeing success in both harm reduction and overall cost to our policing and health care services, as well as providing housing.

Perfect, no, but it's a positive step in the right direction.

Those shedding light on violence and conflict are not fear mongers, they are engaged citizens who are invested in the success of our downtown. Most importantly, they are living with this reality every day. We would do well to heed their call for a different approach, and question how we are measuring our successes.

A lot of the narrative about downtown is about the spaces and buildings: the half empty malls and vacant lots.

There are ways to engage and encourage these absentee owners to invest in our community so these spaces don't sit idle and empty for years. The status quo cannot remain if we want to provide the spaces we need to revitalize our downtown.

Celebrate successes

While continuing to push for new life in these vacant and unused spaces, let's remember to celebrate those who are already doing so.

There are those who are taking great pride in their spaces and work hard on improving them. Look at the Adam Dental Clinic, with its amazing gardens in the summer and elaborate lighting over the winter. This is a business owner who has decided to invest in our downtown and their space in it.

Ask yourself, what are you doing to help solve this problem other than talking about it?

It's not just property owners, but Yellowknife businesses, non-profits, and residents who are improving our downtown, by supporting and growing a vibrant community and many of them are slowly making their little corner of downtown better.

Food trucks, pop-up parks, art installations on buildings and transformers, civic holidays and the farmers market in Somba K'e Civic Plaza all add to a sense of community. Yes, some are not overly successful, some even outright fail but ask yourself, what are you doing to help solve this problem other than talking about it?

Effort matters.

Talking taxes

All that said, I know many Yellowknifers do not live or work downtown. Many avoid it completely and wonder why they should care about it at all.

For those who the social or community arguments do not resonate, here is one sure to apply: property taxes. Everyone hates them, especially when they go up.

Downtown Yellowknife is one of the few areas of the city that generates enough revenue via property taxes to cover the actual cost of the city services required for it to exist, in addition to subsidizing the suburban lifestyle many in the city enjoy.

Shop there, eat there, open a business.

The recently built Gallery Building on the corner of Franklin Avenue and 52nd Street pays approximately $161,000 in municipal and school taxes per year. This is roughly the equivalent of the same taxes on 51 of the new homes being built on Hall Crescent that required all new water and sewer lines, pump stations, parks and paving and ongoing maintenance.

In comparison, all that infrastructure for the Gallery Building was already in place.

By revitalizing our downtown, we get to add to our tax base without adding to our tax burden. The more buildings that go downtown, or old ones that are retrofitted and repurposed, the less we need to build more suburban liabilities or increase taxes.

So, what can we do now to improve our downtown?

Shop there, eat there, open a business and, if possible, live downtown or close by. Yes, parking can feel tough (it's not, but that's a whole other story), yes there are a lot of social issues, but if everyone does a little to help make our downtown better, our whole community benefits

This column is part of CBC's Opinion section. For more information about this section, please read this editor's blogand our FAQ.