Article content

Downtown Vancouver continues to send mixed signals for post-pandemic recovery, with cellphone data suggesting a slow return to the office, yet it leads North America in creating tech jobs.

Article content

The city ranked 54th out of 63 cities in North America in a study from the University of Toronto that took cellphone statistics and compared recent activity in a city’s downtown with levels before the pandemic.

Article content

But Vancouver also had the highest tech-job growth rate — 69 per cent — among the top 50 tech markets in North America, according to the results of an annual study of tech sector labour market trends released this week by CBRE. Calgary followed at 61 per cent, with the Waterloo, Ontario, region at 52 per cent.

“It’s huge. This is ahead of cities like New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C. It’s a very big statistic,” said CBRE’s Vancouver-based managing director, Jason Kiselbach.

The CBRE report said that these Canadian markets created substantially more jobs than they graduated people with technology degrees, whereas the opposite was true in some American cities.

Article content

Article content

Amazon Canada has confirmed it will move into the south tower of The Post at West Georgia and Hamilton streets. There had been some speculation this might not happen after the company joined other giants in mass layoffs during the spring.

But the glimmer of positive news comes as pension funds have put up for sale two long-held downtown Vancouver office towers. June also saw the final exit of U.S.-based retailer Nordstrom, leaving a 230,000-square-foot retail hole at CF Pacific Centre, the major downtown mall.

According to the U of T study on downtown recovery, downtown Vancouver’s cellphone activity levels from March to May 2023 were only 46 per cent of those recorded during the same three-month period in 2019.

Article content

Salt Lake City in Utah has been ranked No. 1 in the project for some time, recording cellphone activity levels this year that exceeded pre-pandemic levels.

On the other hand, San Francisco has consistently ranked at the very bottom of the list. Cellphone activity in that city from March to May 2023 was only 32 per cent of pre-pandemic levels.

The situation in San Francisco drew a lot of attention this week as the CEO of the city’s largest employer and the anchor tenant in its tallest skyscraper said its downtown core is “never going back to the way it was” when thousands of workers streamed in daily.

Marc Benioff of Salesforce was quoted by The Associated Press as advising San Francisco Mayor London Breed to convert office space to housing and hire more police officers to create a greater sense of safety.

Article content

At least one longtime Downtown Vancouver business owner agrees there needs to be immediate attention to public order and safety.

“The main problem is dealing with people who are damaging my property. Every day, there are syringes and needles and people in my doorway. It’s not just me. The next door over, they are also getting broken into,” said Mario Trejier who has been running Mario’s Coffee Express on Howe Street since 1995.

“My patience is almost done.”

[email protected]

Support our journalism: Our in-depth journalism is possible thanks to the support of our subscribers. For just $3.50 per week, you can get unlimited, ad-lite access to The Vancouver Sun, The Province, National Post and 13 other Canadian news sites. Support us by subscribing today: The Vancouver Sun | The Province.

Article content