Farhi offers to partner with city as London, Ont. unveils strategy to fight office and storefront vacancies

Shmuel Farhi hasn’t seen the strategy yet, but recent talks with the mayor and a desire to see action to address London’s stubbornly high vacancy rates in its core business districts has the mega-landlord extending an olive branch.

“I am happy to partner and do whatever I can from my perspective,” Farhi told CTV News London.

Farhi Holdings is the downtown’s largest landlord.

He described a pair of meetings with Mayor Josh Morgan as productive.

“I am actually looking forward to working with Josh and his team to move the city in the right direction because the downtown is the heart and soul of the community,” he said.

The statistics in the city’s new Core Area Land and Building Vacancy Reduction Strategy are sobering — but not surprising.

Ground floor retail vacancy

• 24.5 percent in Old East Village (86,000 sq. ft.)
• 17.4 percent in Downtown London (308,900 sq. ft.)
• 12.6 percent in Midtown (14,300 sq. ft.)

Office space vacancy

• 24.6 percent in core area (1,190,983 sq. ft.)

Core area vacant lots

• 13 vacant land parcels (2.19 acres)

Core area parking lots

• 67 surface lots (29.32 acres)

The city’s new vacancy-fighting strategy goes beyond incentivizing property improvements, focusing on a holistic approach with four principles: property, people, place, and promotion.

“We have incentives now for property improvements, but the other three components place, people, and promotion are also important,” explained Manager of Core Area and Urban Regeneration, Jim Yanchula. “It won’t work with just the property [component].”

The strategy doesn’t shy away from the impact that social challenges and street-level homelessness are having on the site-selection decisions made by commercial tenants.

“In order to have safety, we have to find homes for the most vulnerable people,” said Farhi.

Turning around the vacancy crisis in the core will also require small and mid-sized landlords to be on board.

COVID-19 pandemic restrictions and recent roadwork along Dundas Street have triggered vacancies in Mike Mikhiel’s commercial building next to the Aeolian Hall.

“I lost about four tenants,” Mikhiel explained. “I hope the City of London will do something about it and come back with any rule [changes] that would help the tenants here.”

Across the street there is confidence that the area will rebound.

Steven Manuel is renovating space for new commercial tenants and explained, “The more the city can do, the sooner the better, so we can get things headed in the right direction.”

Farhi stressed that time is of the essence.

“It’s time for the city to stop doing reports, and start doing. In the past 25 years [the city] spent millions of dollars on reports and we’ve gotten nowhere.”

Council will discuss the core area vacancy strategy at a committee meeting on May 30.