For movie lovers in Centretown, the loss of the multiplex theatre in the World Exchange Plaza is bad enough for the sheer inconvenience of it. Want to see the Oscar Best Picture nominees on the big screen? You’ll now be taking a lengthy trip to the suburbs, instead of what had previously been a short stroll.
But the shuttering of Ottawa’s only downtown first-run movie theatre is more than just an annoying inconvenience and it’s more than just a symbol of the challenge urban cores face in competing against the sprawling mega-malls of the suburbs. The loss of this cinema is a direct obstacle to the city’s goal of increasing downtown density through condo development.
Although densification always comes with challenges, the condo boom is good for Ottawa’s downtown. It will bring in new residents, new services, and new life to the streets. There’s no doubt that Centretown’s condo market has plenty of room for growth; just in the past couple months, a 27-storey condo tower was proposed for Lisgar Street near Bank Street, and another 19-storey tower was proposed for the north end of Bronson Avenue.
Yet residents moving in to these new buildings are enticed by certain promises. They’re buying into a lifestyle where the services they need and the leisure activities they want are almost always within easy walking distance. A new condo development soon to open at the corner of Metcalfe and Nepean, for example, includes a new Sobey’s grocery store. But when it comes to entertainment options, Ottawa’s downtown now looks a lot less appealing.
This doesn’t need to be overstated, of course; there are still many high-end cultural offerings downtown, such as the National Arts Centre and the Bytowne cinema. But cities trying to get young people to move downtown need mass-culture options as well. Even in the age of Netflix, multiplex theatres remain a crucial part of this. There's no doubt that fewer people go to theatres today than a decade ago, but statistics from the Motion Picture Association of America also show the decline has stopped in the past couple years, including in Canada. In fact, Cineplex reported record attendance in its Canadian theatres last year, selling 19 million tickets in the third quarter of 2013.
To a certain extent, of course, the location of a multiplex theatre has to be decided by private businesses, not politicians. But city council has been involved in this from the beginning, having required the World Exchange Plaza to have an entertainment venue – an obligation the city has now decided to let the property managers out of. Should the city have put up a bigger fight to keep the theatre? Did the push for a theatre at Lansdowne Park doom the prospect of keeping a Centretown theatre operating? And is a new theatre in the Rideau Centre redevelopment a viable possibility?
Centretown voters should keep these issues in mind as the municipal election campaign begins. Somerset Ward incumbent Diane Holmes supported keeping the theatre and said so publicly many times. It is still an open question, however, whether enough was done to save Centretown’s only theatre, and whether there’s a plan for the future.