Saskatoon community leaders discuss how to improve safety and vibrancy in the city's downtown

Some of Saskatoon’s community leaders gathered Wednesday to discuss the challenges facing the city’s downtown, including crime, poverty, addiction and commercial vacancies.

“We’re dealing with things from COVID, from the pandemic, from residential schools, from everything that’s just piling up in our city and it’s not good for our downtown,” said Saskatoon Tribal Council (STC) Chief Mark Arcand.

The STC is trying to address those challenges by opening a temporary homeless shelter downtown that has a zero tolerance policy for drugs and alcohol. It would have regular wellness checks, food and laundry services, sleeping accommodations and Indigenous Elders on-site.

The 50-bed shelter is awaiting final approval from the City of Saskatoon. It will be decided Thursday in an emergency meeting called by Mayor Charlie Clark.

“Each one of us have the potential of being homeless if we lose our jobs. Where are we going to go? What are we going to do? And how are we going to get out of that? It can happen to anybody at any given time,” Arcand said.

“The pandemic has made that even worse. You see a lot of mental health and addictions. We’ve got to work on trauma-informed care, not just giving them a house, but the aftercare, the follow-up care so we can keep working with them to really support them.”

Arcand said it’s important for different organizations and the community to work together to keep the downtown a vibrant and safe place.

“It’s not us versus the business community or the business community versus us or the west side versus the east side. It’s not about that. This is our community whether we travel downtown to Stonebridge or to the east side, we see this all over. But it’s a situation that we all have to come together to understand.”

Arcand was one of three speakers on a panel Wednesday called “A Downtown at the Tipping Point” as part of the Greater Saskatoon Chamber of Commerce’s Powerhouse Series.

Saskatoon Police Chief Troy Cooper also shared his thoughts on the state of downtown, saying crime in that area is down but that social agencies are at a tipping point.

“What we’re finding is that the people who are providing those services are overcapacity and that creates a whole new set of problems for that organization and for everybody else. It’s not a safe place to be,” he said.

Cooper said officers are often called in to help those facilities but while police do have to play a role in public safety, he said there are better ways to address those needs.

He said it’s something the police service is in the process of working out with the STC for the temporary shelter.

“Make sure we are aware of it, that as its capacity grows, we increase resources, but more importantly, that we act as a partner in public safety, that we act as an advisory function to the shelter so that they can be aware of what’s required because it might not be police, it might not be alternative response officers, it might be an increase in some of their own internal capacity on peacekeeping and just training.”

Brent Penner, executive director for the Downtown Saskatoon Business Improvement District, said commercial vacancies downtown are also a concern.

He said the vacancies are partially due to the pandemic with more people working remotely and not needing office space.

The changing landscape with the addition of new, larger buildings like the Nutrien building and the East Tower are also a factor as they added 360,000 square feet to the downtown, according to Penner.

“If those properties are vacant, their value goes down, the city is able to collect less tax from there and as we all know, the city is going to get their taxes and that shifts more to the residential side so again, it’s incumbent on us to support local, shop local.”