What’s next for our downtown?

There can be no sugarcoating the fact that another two large banking institutions have decided to flee downtown Brandon for more friendly commercial retail corridors in other parts of the city.

Later this year, BMO and RBC will leave their long-standing downtown Brandon locations, with BMO moving to Park Avenue and the Royal Bank branch on Rosser Avenue consolidating with an existing branch on 18th Street.

They join TD Canada Trust, which closed its downtown location on Rosser in 2020 and moved to 18th Street, as well as Westoba Credit Union in 2017, which shuttered its 10th and Princess location in 2017.

Hope and optimism aren’t the typically emotions we feel when significant businesses abandon our neighbourhoods. We have to be real about this situation — this is a distressing reality for downtown Brandon. The ongoing trend of financial institution exodus from the downtown signals a decline in local foot traffic, reduced commercial investment in the region and obvious economic stress, which can lead to even more neighbourhood decline.

And the banks not so much decided to leave as a financial decision as fled the downtown for more friendly commercial retail corridors. But before anyone decides to demonize a financial institution for making such a decision, we have to acknowledge the fact that they are only following their customers, many of whom were already avoiding their downtown locations.

Case in point, the Royal Bank location at The Town Centre on Rosser Avenue has a dedicated security officer standing watch in the hallway outside the institution’s banking machines, just across the hallway from the mall entrance to the Western Manitoba Regional Library.

That’s not exactly a welcoming attraction. And customers have a habit of voting with their feet, and their business.

And it must also be said that the nature of banking is changing too, with more and more people using online services, which requires much less of a brick-and-mortar footprint. In the case of the Royal Bank branch, for example, there is a considerable savings to be had through consolidation.

Essentially, that leaves three major banking institutions left in downtown Brandon, not counting any banking machines you may find at a few downtown locations. They include Compass Credit Union at 1016 Rosser Ave., Scotiabank at 1003 Rosser Ave. and CIBC at the corner of Ninth Street and Victoria.

Downtown, once the city’s heart of business and commerce, is on the verge of becoming a banking desert, and that will have its own consequences for community and city efforts to revitalize the neighbourhood.

But that is no reason to give up on the neighbourhood.

Let’s be clear, there are strong and sustained efforts underway to change the nature of downtown Brandon. The cadet force put in place by Brandon Police Service and stationed in the downtown has apparently made a significant and noticeable dent in area crime. They’re meeting a demand by business owners who have called upon the city for a more visible police presence.

And as we reported in March of this year, that increased police cadet presence was credited with a sharp downturn in break-and-enters in 2025, though we do not have the latest numbers to see if those efforts have been sustained.

The Brandon Downtown Development Corporation continues to administer local regeneration funding with thousands of dollars in grant allocations for storefront improvements.

The Downtown Biz continues its efforts to improve downtown’s image by bringing more people to the area through organizing and supporting community events such as its Downtown Summer Market and the Downtown Cruise Night.

And even more importantly, there is new construction taking place along Pacific Avenue in the form of a new pickleball facility — and across from that a multi-building residential project that promises 72 new rental apartments by 2027.

Clearly the effort is there. And we need to celebrate and support all of them because they’re all trying to find a way to improve the downtown. And with any luck, they may yet be successful.

But you can’t change decades of financial and social deterioration overnight. And unfortunately, these efforts have come too late to prevent the departure of some significant financial tenants in our city’s historic downtown.

The question now before elected officials, local businesses and downtown landowner is simple: Where do we go from here?