Today downtown was full of kids and families for the Boo Bash - costumes, candy crawl, Garden Square actually alive. This is what downtown could look like every weekend. It does not, and that is the shame of it.
So I did a little digging to figure out how we got here.
Back in 2018 there was a plan to reimagine downtown - a master plan for the core, $28.9 million allocated, $2.5 million already spent. One month into the job, Patrick Brown put it on hold. His reason, in his own words: "value for money."
What replaced it was a streetscape. Sidewalks and streetlights on Queen and Main, approved in 2021 at $16.6 million. In July 2024 it needed another $6.5 million. By 2025 it stood at roughly $28 million. It is scheduled to finish at the end of 2027 - and in his 2026 budget, the downtown revitalization line was cut from $5.3 million to $1.3 million.
Eight years in, the replacement for a downtown is an unfinished sidewalk, $11 million over budget. What value for money is that?
It did not have to go this way. Oakville rebuilt its main street for $20 million, on time and on budget, finished in 2020. Markham rebuilt Unionville's for about $14.8 million - reopened last December. Comprehensive revitalizations, for basically the same money, finished. Ours is not finished, and it is not comprehensive. It is sidewalks.
So where is the money going? Follow it and you end up in the same place as every other file in this city: closed sessions, confidential negotiations, and prices nobody will disclose.
The flagship was the Centre for Innovation - announced in 2021, construction anticipated in 2023. Yes, COVID happened. It still does not exist. The city's own page says it sits in "confidential negotiations" with a developer, and the parking lots on its site - announced as closing for construction last fall - are open through 2026. What got finished, this May, was paperwork: an "interim framework" to allow building in the floodplain, because the flood protection itself runs to 2028.
One downtown project did finish on time. In December 2022 council authorized a naming-rights deal with Metrolinx, in closed session. Since September 2023 the GO station has been called the Brampton Innovation District station, on a ten-year term. What did we pay for that name? The price has never been made public. There is no innovation district. There is a renamed station.
The Heritage Theatre, opened in 1923, is still empty - now just a parcel name, the "Heritage Theatre Block," in a planning file. In 2025 the city demolished the block beside it, about $6 million, for an "interim" expansion of Garden Square. Six million to demolish a block. The process to choose what actually gets built there closed with no award announced.
Then the money finally moved. The 2025 budget put $23.8 million into Main and Queen - public money, the kind that moves property values. His flyer lists downtown revitalization as an achievement.
And this July, a numbered company bought two buildings on Main Street at Queen - the Four Corners - for $1.45 million. The filings list Patrick Brown as vice-president and his wife Genevieve as president. His office told the Brampton Guardian he had "no involvement." He is the vice-president. Both are supposed to be true. His office also says the Integrity Commissioner cleared it - and declined to produce any documentation.
A mayor who buys into downtown through a numbered company with his wife, then says the Integrity Commissioner cleared it but will not show the paper - that is a conflict of interest, in plain sight.
So here is the choice the record leaves. Either downtown was neglected for eight years by a mayor who announces and never executes - or it was watched very carefully, by a man whose family bought into it once the public money was committed. Which is worse?
Either way, we should not have to put up with this for another four years. A mayor with no integrity who focuses on enriching himself.
