Downtown Tomorrow Plan

Orillia's 2025 Downtown Tomorrow Plan is a long-term vision for Orillia’s Downtown. Downtowns are special places that bring communities together. A healthy city needs a healthy downtown, where residents and visitors gather to shop, dine, celebrate local events, and enjoy shared experiences.

Goals and initiatives

The 2025 Downtown Tomorrow Plan was shaped through consultation with residents, community partners, stakeholders, and interested groups. It establishes seven goals and 31 strategic initiatives to help create a vibrant, thriving downtown over the next 20 years.

Goals

Increase the Residential Population and Offer a Full Range of Housing Options.
Reinforce Downtown as a Civic and Institutional Hub.
Acknowledge Orillia’s Indigenous History and Reinforce its Cultural Richness.
Enhance the Shopping and Dining Experience.
Improve Connections Downtown and Enhance Safety.
Create and Enhance Space for Playing, Gathering, and Relaxing.
Promote Orillia as a Year-round Destination and Enhance the Visitor Experience.

Strategic initiatives

Facilitate the development of affordable housing Downtown.
Facilitate infill development in the Downtown core.
Facilitate redevelopment and intensification in South Downtown.
Continue the extension of Lightfoot Drive southward.
When the OSMH relocates, works with the hospital and the Province to optimize the site for mixed use development that maintains a health services hub.
Enhance the CIP programs that encourage brownfield development, upper-storey residential conversions and façade improvements.
Ensure an adequate supply of parking to support residential intensification.
Work with Lakehead University, Georgian College and DOBIA and landowners on strategies to bring more students Downtown.
Transform the Farmer’s Market.
Work with Indigenous peoples and organizations to identify opportunities to recall, acknowledge and celebrate Indigenous culture and history.
Work with Orillia & District Arts Council, the DOBIA, and property owners to make underutilized spaces available to artists and community groups.
Upgrade Mississaga Street.
Integrate public art into the design of streetscape and open space improvements.
Continue to support outdoor dining.
Coordinate and extend shopping hours.
Enhance key passageways and other connections to parking lots.
Improve active transportation connections to the Orillia Recreation Centre.
Enhance the Colborne Street and Coldwater Street streetscapes as development comes forward.
Plant additional trees on neighbourhood streets.
Improve transit connections to and within Downtown.
Building on the Waterfront Centre to create a multi-purpose recreation hub.
Improve Veterans’ Memorial Park.
Develop and implement a “sports court plan” for Downtown.
Develop an ecological restoration and public access plan for the Rexton property.
Redesign Library Square and improve its interface with Mississaga Street.
Build a dog park at the Orillia Recreation Centre.
Attract a new hotel or other unique accommodations to the Downtown.
Update and implement a four-season tourism strategy.
Work with Metrolinx to implement seasonal GO Bus service to Orillia.
Continue to expand and enhance wayfinding.
Spice up Downtown and increase pedestrian safety with vibrant, low-cost streetscape improvements.

The 2012 Downtown Tomorrow Plan

The updated 2025 Downtown Tomorrow Plan builds on the progress made under the 2012 Downtown Tomorrow Plan.

The 2012 plan identified 33 strategic initiatives to be implemented over a 20-year period, many have been completed or are in progress. Major projects included the Waterfront Redevelopment Project, Centennial Drive Reconstruction, and the Downtown Tomorrow Community Improvement Plan.

The implemented strategic initiatives helped strengthen Downtown Orillia, celebrate its unique culture and heritage, enhance the visitor experience, and reinforce its role as a vibrant gathering place and destination for residents and visitors alike.