New Report by Richard Florida Confirms Advantages of Downtown Airports – Yahoo Finance

Research focuses on Billy Bishop Airport and its influence in shaping Toronto’s restoration and alternative

TORONTO, Jan. 24, 2023 /CNW/ –  A centrally positioned, metropolis airport is essential to Toronto’s continued development and ambitions, states a brand new report revealed by PortsToronto and authored by revered urbanist and College of Toronto Professor, Dr. Richard Florida. The report, titled, Toronto’s Downtown Airport: A Highly effective Financial Asset within the Metropolis’s City Core, notes that metropolis airports, like Billy Bishop Toronto Metropolis Airport, help companies, present connectivity and unlock alternatives that make a metropolis world class. These airports even have a key position in constructing information economies, taking part in a essential position within the circulation of individuals and concepts.

The report comes at a time when each Toronto and its downtown airport are at an inflection level. Each are rising from the pandemic, and as thought goes into what the wants of Toronto might be within the coming a long time, consideration must also be given to the position Billy Bishop Airport can play in constructing the worldwide metropolis that Toronto aspires to be.

“Billy Bishop is central to Toronto’s prosperity,” states Dr. Richard Florida. “It brings vacationers and far wanted income to the town and its city core, that are nonetheless recovering from the pandemic,” he provides. “Extra importantly, it offers a direct gateway to main cities resembling New York, Washington, D.C., Boston, and Chicago, bolstering Toronto’s position as a worldwide expertise and tech hub.”

The report is obtainable here and highlights the quite a few advantages that Billy Bishop Airport brings to Toronto, together with:

• Offering the town with a novel aggressive benefit, inserting travellers near the downtown industrial centre and its cultural facilities — threatened as they’re by the shift to distant work and decreased workplace occupancy.

• Billy Bishop Airport is among the many largest suppliers of fine, high-paying blue-collar jobs for metropolis residents and staff – jobs which are in any other case declining and in more and more quick provide. Airports additionally generate important demand for native companies, which in flip create extra and higher jobs for lower-paid service staff in surrounding retail institutions, resorts, and workplace services.

• Billy Bishop Airport is projected to have added roughly $3 billion {dollars} to Toronto’s economic system in 2022, up from $2.1 billion in 2019, and an quantity which is predicted to develop to just about $4.8 billion by 2025.

• Based on a 2022 survey, 85 per cent of Toronto residents “agree” that “Billy Bishop Toronto Metropolis Airport is a beneficial asset for your entire metropolis”. A majority of Torontonians additionally agreed that Billy Bishop Airport is an efficient use of land (82%); that it is sensible to have an airport downtown (85%); and that the airport performs a central position for enterprise, well being care, and job creation for the town (78%).

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Further Quotes

RJ Steenstra, President & CEO PortsToronto, Proprietor and Operator of Billy Bishop Toronto Metropolis Airport 
By all metrics, Billy Bishop Toronto Metropolis Airport is an asset and an important piece of transportation infrastructure that may propel the Metropolis of Toronto ahead. Extra particularly, Billy Bishop Airport is a key financial driver; a creator of jobs, a connector of individuals and companies; an enabler of tourism; a supplier of significant healthcare by means of Ornge; and neighbour, making investments in sustainability and group. The Metropolis of Toronto is at an inflection level the place it must shake-off the pandemic declines, and re-entrench itself as a world-class metropolis. Billy Bishop Airport is on the same journey and is raring to work with the Metropolis of Toronto and the Federal Authorities on a future imaginative and prescient for the airport.

Dr. Richard Florida, Professor of Financial Evaluation and Coverage, Rotman Faculty of Administration; Co-founder of CityLab; and Founding father of the Inventive Class Group 
There are few higher symbols of Toronto’s aspirations as an economically and socially various international metropolis than having a modern, environmentally sustainable airport that matches seamlessly into the waterfront and serves as an important anchor for its vibrant downtown. Each the town and the airport are at an inflection level when it comes to optimizing infrastructure and making the mental funding to be world-class. The airport is an simple asset to the Metropolis of Toronto and area and ought to be thought to be such. This implies demonstrating the management and imaginative and prescient to acknowledge the influence the airport already makes when it comes to financial acquire, connectivity, help of healthcare and driver of tourism and commerce; but additionally to take motion to safe and optimize the longer term potential of this airport to embrace new expertise, enhanced sustainability and balanced development. Downtown airports are beneficial belongings to any metropolis in any a part of the world. Toronto is lucky to have had a downtown airport for the final 80+ years, and ought to be taking a look at making certain it’s right here for the following 80 years or extra to help what this metropolis ought to and could be.

Neil Pakey, President and CEO, Nieuport Aviation, Billy Bishop Airport Terminal Proprietor and Operator 
A cleaner, greener, quieter downtown airport is an thrilling a part of Toronto’s future as a worldwide metropolis. Now, with the discharge of the Richard Florida Report, we start the vital job of mapping out that future for Billy Bishop Airport. For a few years YTZ has been of essential significance to the Metropolis particularly when contemplating its’ rising financial influence. It offers our prospects a handy, straightforward and pleasant airport expertise from the center of the town, and inbound guests to Toronto an unbelievable first impression of the Metropolis. This report confirms that having a downtown airport, with its easy and fast entry to every little thing in Toronto is a aggressive benefit that ought to proceed to be celebrated. Now could be the time to lock in Billy Bishop Airport’s future as a world-class downtown airport and as a gateway for a world-class metropolis.

Stephen Lund, CEO, Toronto International 
The significance of Billy Bishop Airport to the Toronto Area economic system and worth proposition can’t be overstated,” stated Stephen Lund, CEO, Toronto International. “Downtown airports present cities with distinctive aggressive benefits, enabling connections with different main international centres, and our downtown airport provides unmatched connectivity with the centre of Canada’s enterprise and monetary hub. As we compete with cities like New York, London and San Francisco for international expertise and excessive tech enterprise, air connectivity is a essential a part of this equation.

About Billy Bishop Airport Toronto City Airport

Providing service to greater than 20 cities in Canada and the U.S., with connection alternatives to greater than 80 worldwide locations through our airways’ networks, Billy Bishop Airport is a vital worldwide gateway and a key driver to Toronto’s economic system which historically welcomes roughly 2.8 million passengers per yr. Billy Bishop Airport is famend for its distinctive journey expertise, effectivity and customer support and has gained a collection of passenger-driven awards. With a deal with cleaner, greener and quieter operations, Billy Bishop Toronto Metropolis Airport has made important upgrades in latest yr to realize its sustainability goals that are reported on an annual foundation. Billy Bishop Airport is owned and operated by PortsToronto.

About PortsToronto

For greater than 100 years PortsToronto has labored with its companions on the federal, provincial and municipal ranges to reinforce the financial development of the Metropolis of Toronto and the Larger Toronto Space. PortsToronto owns and operates Billy Bishop Toronto Metropolis Airport, which welcomed roughly 2.8 million passengers in 2019; the Outer Harbour Marina, one among Canada’s largest freshwater marinas; and the marine Port of Toronto that features companies in quite a lot of sectors together with marine delivery, cargo companies, media manufacturing and passenger cruises. PortsToronto is dedicated to fostering robust, wholesome and sustainable communities and has invested greater than $14 million since 2009 in charitable initiatives and environmental applications that profit communities alongside Toronto’s waterfront and past. PortsToronto operates in accordance with the Canada Marine Act and is guided by a board with illustration from all three ranges of presidency.

SOURCE PortsToronto

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