Weekly Regional Business Intelligence | | | Written by Kieran Delamont, Associate Editor, London Inc. | | | Richmond Row stabbing reignites safety concerns among downtown businesses The safety of businesses and their employees in the core and along Richmond Row is back in the news, after one of the managers at Joe Kool’s was stabbed last Monday after asking a man loitering in the back parking lot to move along. (The manager was taken to hospital and then released a day or so later.) The incident has prompted a raft of responses from businesses in the area, who have long been complaining that a combined lack of police presence and social supports, real or perceived, are effectively downloading social issues onto their doorsteps. It’s also got businesses on the bail reform beat, after police Chief Thai Truong posted on X that the accused was a “prolific offender.” The London Chamber put out a statement this week supporting bail reform. “If we want London to thrive, we need a bail system that keeps habitual violent offenders off the sidewalk, and the supports that stop vulnerable people from becoming repeat offenders in the first place,” said the London Chamber’s COO, Kristen Duever. The upshot: The good news, above all else, is that the Kool’s manager is fine ― he told CTV News London he will “only miss a couple weeks of hockey” and is reportedly back on the job. But downtown safety is always a bit of a third rail in urban centres, as this incident makes clear enough; highly public stories like this increase tensions, animate people’s frustrations and validate a lot of the fears merchants and employees have about working in downtown areas. “What happened to the Joe Kool’s manager doesn’t help in rehabilitating the image of downtown,” wrote Jane Sims of The London Free Press. “If a similar incident happened in other parts of the city, it might have been a blip in the news cycle.” Joe Kool’s owner Mike Smith said that he didn’t want the incident to distract from the improvement he’s seen along Richmond Row over the last couple years. “It’s way better than a year ago, and infinitely better than two years ago,” he told Sims. A narrative that Richmond Row isn’t safe for residents and visitors would be “the last thing downtown and Richmond Row need.” Read more: CTV News London | London Free Press | | | Peacasa earns coveted Walmart listing London’s Peacasa, maker of chickpea-based chips, bagged up a big win at Walmart Canada’s inaugural Growth Summit last week, earning themselves a golden ticket that guarantees them some shelf space at Walmart. The pitch contest is an annual event in the United States, where it goes by the name Open Call, and was expanded to Canada this year. (Doug Ford, noted fan of treats, even made a surprise appearance, addressing the crowd.) “This is the perfect next step for our mission to make healthier snacks more accessible to people in Canada,” said Aaron Johnstone, co-founder and CEO of Peacasa, speaking to Canadian Grocer following their successful pitch. “It sucks when you want to eat healthier and maybe it’s too expensive, so you really see Walmart as being a partner to help us take that next step towards our mission. The affordable price structure they offer is going to be great to offer healthier snacks to more people.” The upshot: Great win for Peacasa and another notch in the belt for The Grove at Western Fair District and their track record as a launching pad for new consumer food products. Johnstone started the company with Victor Courarie-Delage and ramped up in the early 2020s when they were able to secure commercial production space at The Grove. “The phenomenal team at The Grove has provided us with a network of other small manufacturers who are like-minded, public relations support and expertise,” Johnstone said in 2022. The company has since posted a solid growth trajectory, great reviews from retailers and has expanded production. It helps, of course, that the chips are, honestly, incredibly good ― the Honey Dijon flavour is tops for this author. Read more: Canadian Grocer | | | Rock the Park’s younger focus hits the right note The 21st annual Rock the Park concert festival wrapped up last weekend with organizers saying the decision to go to a five-night schedule — and to target a younger demographic — paid off. “It’s the first time we’ve gone to five nights and the only reason we added the Tuesday was because when you get a stadium-sized artist like Hozier, you take advantage of it,” Brad Jones of Jones Entertainment Group (JEG), the festival’s organizer, told CTV New London. “We need to make sure those 16, 18, 21-year-olds, know about Rock the Park.” The success of this year’s festival will probably validate JEG’s larger aim of pivoting the concert festival away from crusty rockers, at least partially. “We had more 16- to 18-year-olds than we’ve ever had and they felt safe. Their parents dropped them off at the front of the park and picked them up.” Jones said they even declined a “major artist” for the 50-plus demographic to make room for younger acts. All that said, the plan is to be back to four nights for next year, but to maintain the younger target audience, even with the student-focused Rock the Runway planned for this fall. “For 2026, we will certainly be four nights again,” Jones said. “Five nights is a lot on our staff and volunteers.” The upshot: The other group happy with this year’s festival? The neighbours, who told the CBC News London that new technology deployed by Rock the Park to cut down on noise pollution was a success. This year, the festival used new speaker technology to better direct the sound towards the centre of the festival grounds, the city’s special events manager said, adding that the tech was also used at Sunfest. Nearby Blackfriars residents gave it the thumbs up. “This year, it’s better. It’s just right and listenable here,” said one nearby resident, telling CBC their back porch faces Harris Park. “We are noticing things aren’t rattling on the shelves and the windows aren’t rattling. We can enjoy the pleasant sound of it when we’re outside and when we shut the door to the house, it doesn’t come through the walls.” Read more: CTV News London | CBC News London | | | City mulls relaunching affordable home ownership program City politicians are considering reviving a forgivable home loan program for renters in the city. The program, which would provide up to $25,000 in a 20-year forgivable loan, ran from 2008 to 2013 under the Canada-Ontario Affordable Housing Program; it was provincial and federal money, managed by the city. There are a number of eligibility criteria: The max home purchase price is $500,000 (of which there are now considerably more on market than a couple of years back, such as the pictured home at 137 Fairmont Avenue currently listed at $474,900). In addition, applicants need to be below an income threshold and the home must be the buyer’s principle residence for 20 years, if they want the loan forgiven. Councillor David Ferreira, chair of the community and protective services committee, said he supported bringing the program back ― his reasoning is that it would help in “ensuring people move throughout the housing continuum, from rental to home ownership,” and said that moving people from rentals to owned homes “does give us a good movement, it alleviates pressure on a lot of areas, and it will put us a little bit closer to kind of that healthy balance.” The city says it has $3.1 million in recycled federal and provincial funds, enough for about 120 loans, and there would be no hit to the tax base. The upshot: While he housing market has cooled considerably and prices have fallen from their Covid-era peaks, analysts and policymakers have started to pay more attention to the down payment challenge ― that is, “a lot of individuals don’t have an issue making the monthly payments,” as Libro’s Firas Halabi described earlier this year, “they just never had the ability to come up with the down payment.” Down payment assistance programs, like the one the city is eyeing now, are getting more attention as a tool to help break up this logjam. It’s unlikely the program will be universally cheered on ― some will argue that the city is simply juicing demand without addressing some of the underlying causes, or that the city shouldn’t get into the business of subsidizing down payments. That said, because the city does get a small cut of the appreciation in price if the home is resold before the loan is forgiven, historically the program has been profitable: during the five years that the city ran the program, it issued $2.3 million in loans and received $2.4 million in repayments. Read more: London Free Press | | | Western ups investment to attract U.S. talent Western University is expanding its attempts to attract American researchers up north amid political tensions and research funding cuts. “Western is making a bold investment in the next generation of researchers,” Florentine Strzelczyk, the university’s provost, told CTV News London. The university’s postdoctoral program will double from 19 to 40 students, offering a $70,000 income for two years, including benefits and a research allowance; those who bring in federal awards will receive an additional $15,000. On top of that, 25 new doctoral positions will be created, each paying $160,000 over four years. Funding for these initiatives comes from existing university cash, Strzelczyk said. “The students who will apply to the program will be supported by our world-class researchers and they will receive the training and the mentorship to continue or launch their careers,” she said. “Those students can launch their careers, fulfill their dreams here, and become possibly members of our community carrying that innovation potential into whatever career they aspire to.” The upshot: Though the program is not exclusively meant to attract American students, it certainly is the undertone of the new funding. The political climate in the U.S. has a lot of countries salivating at a “once-in-a-century brain gain opportunity,” in the words of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. Western has a ton of competition on this front, though — and big competition. The European Union is putting $500 million euros toward the goal of attracting researchers, and many young academics are jumping at the opportunity. While Western is doing this on their own, some Canadian experts think the country should be doing more as a whole. “U.S. scientists are already looking for alternatives. Canada should move quickly and aggressively to become that alternative,” wrote the CD Howe Institute’s Martin Eichenbaum in May. “The strategy is clear: Induce top-tier U.S.-based scientists to move their labs to Canadian institutions by offering them guaranteed funding and research continuity. … The more top researchers we bring in, the easier it becomes to attract more researchers, along with the firms and industries that will follow them.” Read more: CTV News London | | | Planning committee approves major southwest densification proposal The city’s planning committee has approved a proposal by Southside Construction that would see a 4,000-unit development along Pack Road (architectural rendering pictured). The proposal has been a controversial one in the area, with both the local councillor, Anna Hopkins, and the North Talbot Homeowners Association vocal in their opposition (though the latter was formed in response to the proposal itself). Opponents of the proposal say that it goes against both the London Plan and the Southwest Area Secondary Plan with its high-density approach. Advocates for the proposal ― including the mayor ― say those plans are outdated, and that the population growth London has incurred necessitates large development like this. “We far exceeded where we thought we would be in population projections,” said Morgan. “These plans are not reflective of the pressure that we face today.” Others at the council table have concerns, too. Deputy mayor Shawn Lewis said that the developer will need to address major issues around stormwater and infrastructure before shovels can go in the ground. Council will vote on the proposal on Tuesday. The upshot: There is much debate about whether cities ought to be building out, or up. The London Plan, as many urban plans now do, favours the latter. This particular proposal asks: Why not both? “We can’t grow in the same way that we’ve grown in the past ― large swaths of single-family homes,” the mayor said. Still, it is worth considering just how dense this neighbourhood will be. If the population reaches 7,000 there, as the developer predicts it will, that neighbourhood would be about as dense as Crescent Town in Toronto, or around the average population density of Queens in New York or the central district of Paris, France. Opponents of the plan, which include the local councillor, are not making arguments without at least a bit of substance when they argue, as Hopkins said at the committee, that “this development will drastically change the look and how we move in this community.” Read more: CBC News London | | | Dispatch: July 11, 2025 A summary of recent business appointments and announcements, plus event listings for the upcoming week. View listings here | | | | |