Halifax remains 'Canadian comeback city' for downtown activity

Halifax has led the country in downtown recovery out of the pandemic years, with experts saying the secret to success has been the area's diverse economy.

Numbers from the Downtown Halifax Business Commission show about 10.22 million unique visitors in the area from mid-June through Dec. 29 last year. They include tourists as well as people living or working downtown.

In 2019, those numbers were 10.26 million people for the same period. With a difference of about 46,000 and New Year's Eve falling after that time frame, it is likely that downtown Halifax has by now or will very soon reach that pre-pandemic level.

"Halifax has consistently led Canadian cities, since the very beginning, doing much better than the others," said Karen Chapple, director of the School of Cities and professor of geography and planning at the University of Toronto.

The business commission numbers come from Environics, a data analytics company that collects information based on cellphone location pings. 

Chapple said Halifax bounced back quite quickly and has maintained that upward trajectory, unlike some cities that flatlined after early success. The School of Cities also tracks visitor numbers using cellphone data. 

Comparing October 2024 to October 2023, data from Chapple's team found Halifax visits were up 11.7 per cent — the highest percentage change in the country. Calgary was second at 10.5 per cent and Edmonton third at 7.9 per cent.

Chapple said Halifax in particular benefits from a diverse downtown economy, including bars and restaurants, retail, universities, arts and culture, a tourist sector, services like government offices and hospitals, and residential buildings.

"All that is really helping to drive activity downtown and making it really the leading Canadian comeback city," Chapple said.

Looking more closely at the Halifax numbers, Chapple said people from all over the municipality come downtown, and include long-term residents, immigrants and people from various ethnic backgrounds to create a "really wonderful" mix of residents and visitors.

Chapple said the diversity of Canadian downtowns has in general helped them bounce back from the pandemic more quickly than American cities, because many had turned their downtowns into financial districts full of office buildings.

"I think sometimes we forget about the jewel that we have here," said Paul MacKinnon, CEO of the Downtown Halifax Business Commission.

"We're far from a perfect city, but we've got a lot to offer here."

A commission report found the downtown's employment base was 22,374 people in 2023, a jump of 24 per cent over 2022. Of these, about 4,200 people work in the food and drink, retail, and accommodation sectors, with the remaining thousands in real estate, banks or government offices.