When COVID-19 emptied our downtown office towers overnight, nobody imagined it would haunt Toronto’s streets five years later. Yet as of April 2025, foot traffic in the downtown core remains about 43% below its pre-pandemic levels from January 2020.
How It Used to Be (2019): Bustling, Accountable, Vital
In 2019, downtown Toronto was a powerhouse:
- Nearly 585,000 jobs were based downtown—over one-third of the city’s total employment.
- The office vacancy rate was just 2.2%–2.5%, the lowest in decades.
- Pedestrian and subway ridership supported cafés, restaurants, retailers—every corner thrived.
The Collapse—and a Slow, Fragile Recovery
When lockdowns hit, TTC ridership plunged by up to 85%, and downtown streets briefly resembled ghost towns. Vacant storefronts bloomed.
- Vacancy along the Yonge street-front spiked to about 19% during the pandemic.
- Downtown average pedestrian counts bottomed out—but began recovering around spring 2022, climbing to roughly 75% of 2019 foot traffic by 2024.
Still, even in 2024, average foot traffic remained about 10% below 2019 levels.
Office Vacancy: From Tightest Market to Crisis Levels
Commercial real-estate data shows staggering shifts:
- Pre-COVID vacancy: ~2.5% downtown.
- By 2023, vacancy soared to ~16%, reflecting massive office abandonment.
- Reports from Q3 2024 put vacancy lingering at ~17.2%—some of the highest in 30 years.
- Class B/C buildings suffer most: Class A space vacancies were around 13.6%, while Class C in the financial core hit 34.1%.
That shift is driven by tenants actively downsizing or seeking newer, more efficient buildings, even as grumbling gridlock and office conversions complicate the picture.
Why This Still Matters
Even with more workers returning to offices and tourism rebounding, street-level business remains fragile. Pedestrian traffic is neither consistent nor sufficient to sustain many storefronts.
Retail vacancy along Yonge had recovered from ~19% at the height to around 13% in 2024, but that still means over one in eight retail spaces sit empty.
Restaurant owners report that even after reopening, they haven’t regained lost hours of seat-time—and rising inflation squeezed margins further. One local steakhouse owner put it bluntly: you can’t make up for lost business simply by raising prices.
The Stakes Aren’t Just Commercial
The downtown economy accounted for over $84 billion in GDP in 2019, growing to roughly $118 billion by 2023. Tens of thousands of jobs, city and provincial tax revenues, and the vitality of our central public spaces hang in the balance.
And yet, even as retail real-estate availability dropped to a record low of ~2% across Toronto in 2024, signaling demand, it’s the spatial mismatch between office vacancies and retail demand—combined with low foot counts—that starves street-level business.
What Comes Next?
- Downtown cores must diversify beyond reliance on office workers. Residential density, neighborhood amenity hubs, cultural draws—all need investment.
- Repurposing obsolete office buildings to mixed-use is vital—but slow and often blocked by zoning or bylaw hurdles.
- Public policy and BIA action must incentivize new formats—pop-ups, affordable retail rentals, evening programming—to keep streets alive even on Fridays or weekends when office traffic is low.
Final Thoughts
The numbers are stark: foot traffic down 43%, office vacancy up from ~2.5% to ~16–17%, retail vacancy stuck at 13% or more, and businesses still battling debt, shrinking margins, and unpredictable traffic patterns.
Toronto’s downtown is in limbo—not just between shutdown and recovery, but between yesterday’s model and tomorrow’s future. Reviving it will require imagination, urgency, and rigorous support for the storefronts that anchor our city’s soul.