Charlottetown is planning on making some changes to encourage more busineses to move downtown. A CBC report states the city is going to start targetting empty buildings in the downtown core and get them to reopened for business. A perfect example is the old CFCY building downtown and across from it, the old tweels corner store.
The buildings have been empty for an extremely long time and it's pretty obvious there is little interest in them being developed by the owners and it's only in their best interest.
Afterall, when you have vacant commercial space, it is taxed at a lower rate.
By allowing this law it does not help promote the idea of filling the vacant space. Perhaps government should change their tax policies so that if a building is vacant for a certain amount of months during a certain time frame, that it is taxed at a higher rate.
This will encourage the building owners to start making use of their vacant properties and may actually lower the cost of renting.
