Downtown Barrie

What counts as downtown Barrie?

In planning terms, the Urban Growth Centre: about 156 hectares taking in the traditional downtown and a large part of the historic Allandale neighbourhood, as defined by the Province in its Growth Plan. Barrie's Official Plan calls it "the premiere hub for businesses, residences, and visitors" and requires it to reach a minimum of 150 persons and jobs per hectare by 2031, which the City puts at about 23,408 people living or working there. At least 20% of new housing in it is to meet the plan's affordability criteria. On land designated High Density, development there must reach 300 homes per hectare, and buildings taller than 25 storeys are allowed only where a study, such as a market study, shows the need. The City has not published how close the area is to the 2031 target.

The Downtown Barrie BIA, the business association, covers an area of its own, set by council by-law (below).

Is downtown Barrie getting better or worse?

The record cannot settle it, because nobody publishes a downtown series for the things residents describe: storefront vacancy, foot traffic, crime per resident. What exists points both ways. Investment is arriving: tower rezonings, a university campus, park rebuilds and a stadium plan. At the same time council, the police and the BIA have each spent the past two years adding downtown measures aimed at disorder: more officers and special constables, a cleanup pilot, seven-day garbage pickup, and the 2025 state of emergency over encampments. The BIA counts pedestrians with 12 sensors on Dunlop Street and Meridian Place but has not published the counts; its own estimate is that the 2025 Troubadour Festival drew more than 100,000 visitors.

What towers has council approved downtown?

These are the Ward 2 rezonings for tall buildings in and beside downtown that council approved this term and last, with the height or density each approval allows. A rezoning lets an owner build; it does not make them, and the minutes do not record which have started construction.

What is happening with the downtown soccer stadium?

On July 14, 2026 the City, Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, MLS NEXT Pro and Barrie Stadium Group announced that Toronto FC II will move to Barrie from 2028 and play in a new stadium at Dunlop Street West and Bradford Street, the former Barrie Central Collegiate site. The City's project page says:

• the City is investing $26 million$26,000,000 to build it, and Barrie Stadium Group will help develop and operate it;
• it will hold 3,500 seats, expandable to more than 6,500 for sport and 8,500 for concerts, with a 450-space parking lot, and is due in 2028;
• the City expects about $57 million$57,000,000 a year in economic impact from matches and other sporting events and $7 million$7,000,000 from six concerts, and an estimated 156,200 fans a year;
• the City is looking for a place to build new habitat for chimney swifts, a species at risk, under federal rules.

The page says the site choice builds on earlier work for council, including a consultant's report on a stadium near the waterfront and downtown. No staff report setting out the City's share, its funding source or the operating terms, and no council vote approving them, is in the minutes this site holds. Reporting has not agreed on the City's share: Barrie 360 reported the mayor saying the City would front $26 million$26,000,000 of an expected $130 million$130,000,000 cost, while CompassNews reported a City contribution of $8 million$8,000,000. This site uses the City's own figure and treats the operating and cost-sharing terms as unpublished. How the stadium sits beside the capital plan, which put a Performing Arts Centre on the same site, is covered under major investments.

Is the university campus open?

Yes, by the City's account. Lakehead University's Barrie STEM Hub, teaching engineering, mechatronics and computer science, was completed in August 2026 and was due to take its first class on September 8, 2026, the City said. It occupies the former downtown transit terminal at 24 Maple Avenue and a second site at 5 Ross Street, part of the former Georgian College downtown campus, added in January 2026 when Lakehead needed more space: more than 26,000 square feet in all. The City expects it to bring "upwards of 800 students, researchers and faculty" downtown "over the next several years"; first-year enrolment has not been published.

Council approved the partnership on December 4, 2024, 11 to 0. What the City committed:

• $6.5 million$6,500,000 to renovate 24 Maple Avenue, from the Tax Capital Reserve, in place of a planned permanent market project that was cancelled;
• a five-year lease to Lakehead at $1 a year, with the City paying utilities;
• $1 million$1,000,000 toward fitting out and equipping the space, from the Reinvestment Reserve;
• operating support of $400,000 in 2026, $800,000 in 2027 and $600,000 in each of 2028 and 2029, also from the Reinvestment Reserve.

Together that is $9.9 million$9,900,000 by this site's arithmetic, before the cost of the second site, which no document this site found states.

Is Georgian College coming back downtown?

It plans to. On June 24, 2025 the mayor directed staff, under strong-mayor powers, to prepare a $7.5 million$7,500,000 funding agreement with Georgian College over 10 years, "subject to them opening a campus in the downtown area" and to the Ministry of Colleges and Universities confirming its support, to be signed once those conditions are met (mayoral direction MDIR008-25). The college said it planned to open the location, teaching design, emerging technologies and entrepreneurship, in September 2026 (Georgian College, June 24, 2025). Barrie 360 reported the site as 55 Mulcaster Street, across from City Hall, and the project's cost as $32 million$32,000,000 (Barrie 360, June 24, 2025). This site has found no document saying whether the agreement has been signed or the location has opened.

What is planned for the downtown waterfront?

The City is redesigning two downtown waterfront parks: Sam Cancilla Park, where an underground reservoir and booster pumping station are to be removed first, and the first phase of Heritage Park, rebuilding its water-play feature. Public comment closed May 24, 2026; this site found no published design or cost as of October 12. Both follow the 2023 Waterfront Strategic Plan, a ten-year plan for the Kempenfelt Bay shore. The larger waterfront and capital-plan questions are on major investments.

Is downtown Barrie safe?

What has been published measures what police and the City do downtown, not how safe it is. Barrie Police's figures for January to May 2026, reported to its board, show:

• on its downtown slide, eight occurrences in the core "accumulate 49% of the total reactive harm", with arrests in every one ("harm" is the service's own score, weighting each offence by typical sentence length; "reactive" means incidents police were called to);
• officer-generated incidents downtown up more than 145% on the same months of 2024, and "proactive harm" (what officers find themselves) up 450%;
• community-reported harm across the city down 33%.

Those downtown rises are what more patrols produce, so they cannot be read as more crime or less. The service's City Guardian special constables, paid for with the City, recorded 3,068 occurrences at City Hall, the downtown library, Meridian Place and the bus terminal between June 16 and December 31, 2025, 335 of them dispatched calls. How the police deployment has changed since 2024, and the two news accounts of a "175%" downtown figure that disagree, are on the policing page.

The City's own measures this term:

• September 2023: $35,000, one time, to the BIA's downtown public-realm initiatives "to support the safety and well-being of the downtown area".
• January 28, 2026: a pilot of extra waste collection in the BIA area, including seven-day emptying of public bins and cleanup of illegal dumping, paid from the tax rate stabilization reserve, with a report back to General Committee.
• April 2026: a downtown community safety and cleanup pilot at the mini transit hubs, Meridian Place, Heritage Park and Sam Cancilla Park.

Encampments and the state of emergency declared in September 2025 are on the encampments page; noise, illegal dispensaries and other by-law questions are on by-law enforcement.

What is the Downtown Barrie BIA, and what does it cost?

A business improvement area is a local board of the City under the Municipal Act. Its members are the owners and business tenants of commercial and industrial property in the area; they vote to select directors, whom council appoints, alongside one or more directors council appoints directly. Ward 2 Councillor Craig Nixon sits on the Downtown Barrie board. The board proposes a budget; council may approve it in whole or in part but cannot add to it, and raises it through a special charge on business property in the area, collected with property taxes. The board cannot borrow, and the City's auditor audits it.

The 2026 levy, $798,599, is 73.77% more than 2013's $459,566, by this site's arithmetic and before inflation. The BIA's 2025 annual report splits its proposed 2026 budget into $677,952 for operations and $120,647 for capital, and spends it under four headings: events, marketing, the public realm, and advocacy.

How many businesses are inside the downtown BIA?

The City's yearly business survey marks which answering locations fall inside the BIA: 334 in its 2025 directory, 7.61% of the locations it counted citywide. Those are businesses that answered, not a count of every storefront, and the survey does not record vacancies. Jobs and industries citywide are on jobs.

Did the BIA repay the City after the 2025 Troubadour Festival?

No document this site has found answers it. On January 15, 2025 council approved $225,000 for the BIA "for the purpose of a summer concert series", from the Tourism Reserve, "with the BIA to repay all funds raised by them in support of this initiative to the City by December 31, 2025". The BIA was also to present attendance and tourism results to a council committee in the fall of 2025. The motion does not name the Troubadour Festival, and it set no fixed repayment: the BIA owed back what it raised, whatever that was.

The BIA's 2025 annual report calls the festival's return "a major highlight", with more than 100,000 visitors by its estimate, but says nothing about City funding or repayment. The City has published no meeting records of any kind from late October 2025 to mid-January 2026, the period in which the fall presentation and the December deadline fell, and no later minutes mention either. No document found states a repayment of $100,000 or any other amount.

How many heritage properties are downtown?

The City's heritage map holds 143 properties, and 78 of them are in Ward 2, the ward that takes in downtown. Citywide, the City marks 28 as designated and 42 as listed; 9 of the designations date from 2025, more than in any earlier year. The map does not mark the downtown boundary, so these are ward counts.

What does council decide downtown, and what does it not?

• Council decides zoning and Official Plan changes, what the City does with its own land and reserves (the stadium, the STEM Hub, the waterfront parks), the BIA's budget and board, and by-law enforcement. Through its seats on the police board and the police budget it shapes, but does not direct, policing.
• The Province set the 2031 density target through its Growth Plan, and runs the Ontario Land Tribunal. If council refuses a rezoning, or has not decided it within 90 days of the application, the applicant or the Minister can appeal to the Tribunal.
• The County of Simcoe funds and runs shelters and homelessness services; see who is responsible.
• The BIA runs downtown events and marketing and proposes its own budget.
• Owners and developers decide whether and when a rezoned site is built.

Reporting on this issue

• September 25, 2026 City still shopping around for safety barricades at downtown events BarrieToday · By Bob Bruton
• September 23, 2026 City of Barrie to test dual-purpose downtown vehicle barriers for events: memo Barrie 360 · By Julius Hern
• September 21, 2026 Change needed to fix downtown Barrie, says Ward 2 candidate BarrieToday · Written by the candidate, Tracy Strohm
• August 29, 2026 'Incredible' work being done to improve downtown, says Ward 2 incumbent BarrieToday
• July 18, 2026 Ward 2 candidates back new stadium, but raise questions CompassNews · By Stephen J. Donkers
• July 14, 2026 Toronto FC II to relocate to Barrie in 2028 with new downtown stadium Barrie 360 · By Julius Hern
• July 9, 2026 Ward 2 candidates cite addiction crisis, downtown Barrie safety as key election issues BarrieToday · By Bob Bruton
• June 3, 2026 Downtown Barrie BIA chair calls for raids on illegal shops, landlord accountability BarrieToday · By Kevin Lamb

Boards and committees on this issue

Appointed bodies whose work bears on this issue, with everyone this site has on record as serving on them:

• Downtown Barrie Business Association — 61 people on record