Downtown Yonge BIA’s latest development map shows 45+ major construction projects either planned or underway within the district’s 1.3-kilometre boundaries. The concentration includes the Ontario Line subway extension, YongeTOmorrow complete street redesign, College Park’s transformation into a mixed-use development, the long-running Concord Sky residential development, Elm Street revitalization, and dozens of private residential and institutional projects from Toronto Metropolitan University to St. Michael’s Hospital.
The construction surge converges with a retail transformation that has reshaped the corridor’s business composition since 2022. Approximately 250 new businesses have opened in that timeframe, with half being food service operations. The district now operates at 62% services versus 38% retail, with food service alone comprising 40% of all businesses—a dramatic shift from the corporate chain restaurant reputation that defined Yonge Street for decades.
Pauline Larsen, Executive Director of the Downtown Yonge BIA, has spent the past year balancing construction coordination with business recruitment, safety stabilization with programming expansion, and local stewardship with broader downtown advocacy through the newly formed Downtown Toronto BIA Alliance.
The district represents $7.2 billion in commercial real estate and generates just under $1 billion annually in tax revenue for all levels of government. How it navigates the next several years of construction disruption while maintaining business retention and continuing to attract new operators will serve as a test case for managing urban density and infrastructure renewal simultaneously.
The Business Mix Transformation
According to the BIA’s 2025 Retail & Service Landscape report, the district has 635 businesses operating—up 6% from 2021 despite pandemic closures and ongoing construction disruption. However, composition has shifted dramatically.
Food service businesses number 252 locations, a 14% increase since 2021. Clothing retail declined 9% over the same period. Other retail categories dropped 16%. Vacancy sits at 12.5% by store count, down from 15.1% in 2022 but still elevated compared to pre-pandemic levels. The BIA notes many currently vacant storefronts have new tenants in lease negotiations or preparing to open.
Nearly 80% of retail square footage sits within shopping malls—primarily CF Toronto Eaton Centre, The Atrium, and College Park—while food service dominates streetfront locations. The divergence reflects different customer patterns: regional visitors who drive to malls and park underground versus the growing residential population that walks to streetfront businesses.
Seven out of ten businesses operating in 2021 remained open in 2025, a 70% retention rate through pandemic recovery, safety challenges, and now the beginning of the construction era. The retention rate speaks to both business resilience and the BIA’s coordination work.
“We track net new business openings each year, and since 2022 we’ve seen about 250 new businesses, with about half being food service and many of them streetfront,” Larsen said.
Rethinking the Food Scene
When Larsen and Susie Barbosa-Pizzirusso, Manager, Economic & Community Development, proposed walking food tours in late 2024, the internal skepticism reflected Yonge Street’s long-standing reputation problem.
“Yonge Street has traditionally been seen as corporate restaurants and chain restaurants,” Larsen said. “The initial response was, ‘There’s not enough unique restaurants, not enough independent, full-of-character restaurants. How would that work?'”
They piloted four themed series anyway in 2025, partnering with Eat More Scarborough. The winter series focused on comfort food and warm drinks. By September, they were running budget-conscious tours timed to student return and post-summer financial recovery. Tickets cost $10, groups capped at 15 people. Most series sold out within days.
Attendance averaged 91% across the year—unusually high for advance-purchase events in an area still recovering from safety perception issues. But the feedback revealed the tours were accomplishing something beyond restaurant promotion.
“We got comments like, ‘I went on this food tour and there were two people who lived in my condo building that I’ve never met before and now we’re friends,'” Larsen said.
The BIA structured the program to avoid treating restaurants as loss leaders. Participating establishments received full payment for food served. Over a third of restaurants that joined the tours had been on Yonge Street less than three years, reflecting both the rapid pace of new openings and the BIA’s strategy to showcase newer independent operators over established chains.
The program’s success reflects demographic shifts that have fundamentally altered the district’s primary market. Approximately 100,000 residents now live within a 10-minute walk of Yonge and Dundas, primarily using transit, bikes, or walking rather than driving to enclosed malls.
“The importance of the immediate residential primary trade market has become much more than it used to be before the pandemic,” Larsen said.
Construction Coordination at Scale
Managing information flow and relationships across 45 simultaneous construction projects requires infrastructure beyond typical BIA operations. Larsen’s approach centers on what she calls “relationships before crises”—maintaining ongoing contact with the TTC, Metrolinx, construction companies, and both city councillors’ offices before problems emerge.
“I’m a great believer that you should have relationships with people before you need them, before there’s a crisis,” Larsen said. “Can we have the discussion before shovels hit the ground? Can we discuss alternative staging areas if one location isn’t ideal?”
The BIA works closely with councillors and developers to provide constructive input on development applications, attempting to influence staging areas, construction schedules, and wayfinding before projects begin. When unexpected lane closures or staging areas appear without advance notice, the BIA intervenes to gather all parties and resolve issues.
The communication strategy operates on a principle of managing expectations rather than eliminating disruption.
“Construction and street shutdowns are a pain no matter how you look at them, but they’re less of a pain if you know about them and can factor them into trip planning,” Larsen said.
The October 2025 development map breaks projects into categories: under construction within DYBIA boundaries (shown in blue), pre-construction within DYBIA boundaries (shown in orange), under construction outside boundaries (purple), and pre-construction outside boundaries (pink). Major projects include Ontario Line’s Queen Station at 176 Yonge Street (2023-2027), YongeTOmorrow street redesign (2024-2026 design phase, 2030 construction), TTC College Station upgrades (2020-2026), and College Park redevelopment at 420-444 Yonge Street.
“At the end of the day, there’s always going to be something that happens you didn’t anticipate. The best thing you can do is get everyone together and say, ‘We need to get on the same page,'” Larsen said.
The Downtown BIA Alliance Formation
In 2025, six large downtown BIAs with multimillion-dollar budgets formed the Downtown Toronto BIA Alliance in response to the City’s economic development plan identifying the need for a stewardship agency for the downtown core. The alliance includes Bloor-Yorkville BIA, Downtown Yonge BIA, Old Town Toronto BIA (St. Lawrence Market Neighbourhood), Toronto Downtown West BIA, Toronto Financial District BIA, and Waterfront BIA.
Collectively, the six BIAs represent over 10,000 businesses, $50 billion in commercial real estate, and 400,000 employees. The alliance partnered with York University’s Schulich School of Business and Toronto Metropolitan University’s Center for Urban and Land Research to conduct economic impact research supporting an advocacy platform launched in spring 2025.
The research found downtown Toronto contributed $117 billion to GDP in 2023. Of that economic activity, 43.7% flowed to federal government coffers, 11.3% to provincial, and just 4.5% to municipal—a revenue distribution that underpins the alliance’s advocacy argument.
Key vitality metrics measured in 2024 remained below 2019 levels: office employees working downtown at 65-70% of pre-pandemic levels, convention center activity and hotel occupancy depressed, transit ridership lagging, TTC safety perception declining. Toronto’s ranking in the Global Financial Centers Index dropped from #7 in 2019 to #23. Current 2026 metrics may show improvement, though the alliance has not released updated data.
“The very simple message for the Downtown BIA Alliance to the city and different levels of government is: don’t kill the golden goose,” Larsen said. “The city has always been successful and generated major contributions to provincial and municipal GDP, as well as national GDP. But you cannot take that for granted. At a certain point, if people have other options, are they going to take them?”
The alliance’s advocacy focuses on transit investment, public safety improvements, police budget increases to handle major events and demonstrations, and policies supporting downtown competitiveness. The argument acknowledges changed competitive dynamics.
“Unlike 50 or 75 years ago, there are other places they can go, other downtowns where they can do their shopping or find work,” Larsen said. “We have significant challenges—people don’t necessarily feel safe on the TTC, they don’t feel transit is reliable, they’re tired of traffic congestion. If we don’t mitigate the things that stop people from coming downtown, there are other places they can go.”
The alliance submitted detailed advocacy positions to all three levels of government in 2025. Municipal requests focused on TTC safety and reliability improvements. Provincial advocacy centered on Homelessness and Addiction Recovery Treatment (HART) Hubs. Federal submissions emphasized permanent transit funding and infrastructure investment.
Strategic Planning: From Branding to Basics
Larsen frequently gives presentations on urban economics, emphasizing a distinction she considers fundamental to BIA operations: economics is not primarily about money but about allocating scarce resources effectively.
“People assume economics is about money. Economics is actually about how to most effectively allocate scarce resources. How do you do the most with the least or with what you have?” Larsen said.
The BIA’s strategic planning reflects that philosophy. The current 2023-2028 plan differs markedly from the pre-pandemic version in both priorities and resource allocation.
“Before COVID, we were able to focus on things like branding or a clear identity for the neighbourhood,” Larsen said. “When we did our most recent strategic plan, it was much more: we need to get back to basics. If garbage is overflowing, how quickly can waste management get there? If somebody is overdosing, how quickly can a public health nurse get there?”
The three strategic priorities are clean and safe, economic vitality, and public realm experience. Safety stabilization in 2025 represented the most significant win of the year.
“We’ve seen major resolutions of issues that were causing safety concerns in our neighborhood. There has been a stabilization of the sense of safety,” Larsen said. “That’s the fundamental piece you have to get right before you even look at retail or services or education or residents.”
Budget allocation has shifted as safety concerns stabilized. Previously, safety/cleanliness and events/activations each consumed roughly 25% of the budget. As safety issues stabilized through 2025, more resources flowed toward programming. The BIA hosted 111 events, activations, and art installations in 2025.
Revenue Diversification Beyond Levies
Downtown Yonge generates revenue beyond member levies through multiple streams: government grants, corporate sponsorships, and fee-for-service programs.
“We’re one of the few BIAs that makes fairly decent additional revenue on top of our levy,” Larsen said.
Corporate sponsorships come from area businesses and property owners who value activated public spaces like College Park and Trinity Square Park. The sponsorship model recognizes that programming benefits extend beyond immediate retail impact to include property values and corporate image.
The fee-for-service model includes de-escalation training for retail employees dealing with agitated or angry customers. The program, running for several years, is available to businesses anywhere in Toronto—not just within Downtown Yonge boundaries.
“We’ve run de-escalation training for several years now to support safety more broadly in the wider business community,” Larsen said. “That training is available to businesses anywhere in the city of Toronto.”
Larsen describes the approach as an “informal social enterprise”—using Downtown Yonge’s experience managing complex urban challenges to generate revenue while supporting safety across the broader city. The additional revenue gets reinvested into neighborhood programming and operations.
The Microcosm Argument
Larsen frames Downtown Yonge as fundamentally different from Toronto’s traditional ethnic neighborhoods—Little Italy, Little India, Little Portugal. The district’s defining characteristic is its lack of a single defining characteristic.
“We have residents, students, visitors, tourists. We have corporate retail chains, but we also have small independents and streetfront. We’re such a mixture that even though some people say that defies definition, that is what defines us,” Larsen said.
The diversity creates operational complexity but also strategic flexibility. The same person shopping at Eaton Centre might visit a streetfront restaurant. A TMU student might attend a lecture then browse the mall. Regional visitors drive and park underground while residential populations walk to streetfront businesses.
“Everyone who comes into our area or could come into our area is part of the demand that supports the district,” Larsen said. “The same people shopping at the malls could also be shopping at streetfront businesses and vice versa. If our focus is on bringing people into the neighbourhood, they make the choice—maybe they’ll go to the hairstylist while they’re at one of our events, or maybe they’ll come out of their lecture and go on a shopping spree at the Eaton Centre.”
The multisectoral approach extends beyond businesses to include students, residents, visitors, and employees. The BIA engages with all user groups rather than focusing exclusively on businesses and commercial property owners, even though the latter represents the primary BIA mandate.
One general manager from a city department told Larsen the reason Downtown Yonge came through the pandemic stable was “because it has a champion”—someone ensuring stewardship remains in place for the neighborhood.
“Who champions the neighborhood you’re looking at? That champion helps make sure there is stewardship in place for that neighbourhood,” Larsen said.
As the district enters years of construction disruption, Larsen emphasized the importance of maintaining project momentum through the election year.
“It’s easy to lose momentum as we go into an election period, but there are good things happening. There are projects underway. Let’s make sure those continue to move forward,” Larsen said.
Dustin Fuhs is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of 6ix Retail, Toronto’s premier source for retail and hospitality industry news. As the former Editor-in-Chief of Retail Insider, Canada’s most-read retail trade publication, Dustin brings over two decades of expertise spanning retail, marketing, entertainment and hospitality sectors. His experience includes roles with industry giants such as The Walt Disney Company, The Hockey Hall of Fame, The Canadian Opera Company, Starbucks Canada and Blockbuster.
Recognized as a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert in 2024, 2025 and 2026, Dustin delivers insider perspectives on Toronto’s evolving retail landscape, from emerging brands to established players reshaping the city’s commercial districts.