Igor Dragovic

The goal of Business Improvement Areas or Districts (BIA/Ds) is to foster business and improve the local district through physical and promotional investments. This paper identified four candidate retail strip sites in North York, Toronto, to compare to eight established BIAs with intent to evaluate the relevance and need for BIAs in North York. The candidate sites and established BIAs were evaluated using retail strip data between 2001 and 2010, with focus on composition, ethnicity and format of retail and vacancy rates, census tract data between 2001 and 2006 for local areas of the candidate sites and established BIAs, with focus on assessment variables such as population, dwellings, unemployment rate, education and income and field work of the candidate sites and established BIAs. The results of the analysis show that the candidate sites of Avenue-Lawrence and Yonge-Sheppard do not require a BIA association since the retail strips are performing well and the local areas are fairly wealthy. On the other hand, the Bathurst-Lawrence and Yonge-Finch-Steeles candidate sites seem like they have the potential to benefit from a BIA association, but with many considerations in mind.