My Concerns for the Waterloo Economy following UWaterloo’s Fall Term Decisions
Thousands of Universities across North America have announced some form of a university closure for their fall term — the University of Waterloo is not unique in this decision to relocate the majority of on-campus activities online. For many students like myself, we were in fact anticipating some form of closure.
Everything is up in the air right now and we’re all living in this ‘grey-area’ per se, which contrasts to institutions like UWaterloo — where things are usually pretty black and white. None of this comes as a surprise to me, and yes while I felt quite bummed while I read the news of the university’s decision — another anxiety began to occupy my mind with growing concern instead. What does this mean for the Waterloo economy?
For those who are familiar with Waterloo as a city — this place is a prime college-town. Waterloo itself has a resting population of roughly 114,000. Waterloo (or more specifically, the Kitchener-Waterloo region) has 3 neighboring post-secondary institutions; the University of Waterloo, Wilfred Laurier University, and Conestoga College — which attract an annual average 106,451 students altogether. The migrating student population of Waterloo almosts doubles the total population, which helps to magnify the nature of how important the student population is to this city.
Waterloo is a city that experiences seasonal population spikes every year — the population doubles from the months of September to April, then declines in the summer months, all for this cycle to repeat again in the Fall. As a result, the economy adjusts to this accordingly, restaurants, bars, and various other recreational businesses operate successfully in Waterloo with the understanding that for the majority of the year the demand for their services will be fuelled by Waterloo’s massive student population.
This is the part where my concerns deepened.
The university announced it’s shutdown on March 13th and students quickly began to flee the city and return to their hometowns upon hearing this news — plunging the city of Waterloo into a “ghost town” as I like to refer to, (and as someone who calls this place home, I can affirm that the roads have never been so empty and student-less). With that, the confirmed period of Waterloo being a ghost town is currently 9 months, that being the timeline between the day the university shut down on March 13 — to the period when the Fall term would have ended in December.
9 months.
Like I said before, nothing is certain, but one thing I can almost guarantee is that when things are back to normal Waterloo is going to be a very different city. Uptown Waterloo is filled with businesses owned by families and small owners, their businesses are backed with their family home mortgages on the line — they’ve taken risks and bet on the student population to help their businesses thrive. Imagine if Toronto lost half its population for 9 months, what would that do to the city? — I fear for these local business owners, many of which have families, are young and took a leap of faith by opening shop Uptown.
King Street will not be the same, the culture of the city will struggle and businesses will shut down as they try to make ends meet. Waterloo used to be able to guarantee the balance of supply and demand in regards to the economy and student population driving demand. Now that this college town is on hiatus, only time will tell the magnitude of the impact it causes. My heart aches for this city as I know many will struggle — this is inevitable. Now, what I ponder upon next is what the will be done to stimulate the economy in the long term, however long this new reality of ours lasts.
