20 Business View Magazine - April 2016
able, spectator sports facility. It’s a definite showpiece
for our downtown community.
“Right next to it, there is the new Marilyn I. Walker
School of Fine and Performing Arts at Brock Univer-
sity. The school moved its performing arts school to
the downtown area, refurbished a century-old textile
factory, and turned it into a creative arts hub that is
now home to 600 students who study the arts in our
downtown. It is arguably one of the best conversion
blends of old and modern in all of Ontario, when you
look at how it’s been designed.
“Adjacent to that is the recently-opened, FirstOntario
Performing Arts Centre that has four theaters in it,
two of which are used by Brock University’s Fine and
Performing Arts School. So, now you have connectivity
with a school. And the city has built the theater space
so that during the day, they’re used as theater practice
spaces and at nighttime, they’re used for professional
performances and community groups.
“So we’ve really developed into a ‘creative cluster’ -
the downtown being the hub. We’ve attracted theater
groups to open up their spaces in downtown; we at-
tracted Norm Foster, one of the best-known, Canadian
playwrights. He is launching a summer festival start-
ing this year in the downtown area and he’s moved
his office into our city. And now, you have creative
groups who are opening up incubation spaces so that
they can prepare the performances that will grace the
stages of the theater. We have the Niagara Symphony
Orchestra – its home is now the theater; it’s never had
a home, before.
“And what we’ve found is that when you create this
energy around the creative arts, it does attract invest-
ment opportunity, young people, and creative minds.
We’ve seen it in communities like Portland; we’ve
seen it in communities in Canada, such as Kitchener/
Waterloo, where you make those investments in the
creative side and it does create a lot of energy around
it, attracting other people to the community.
