This year, Michelle Groulx found herself back at an organization with which she’s very familiar. After leaving her post as executive director of the Ottawa Coalition of Business Improvement Areas in 2024, Groulx rejoined the group earlier this year as its chief advocate. One thing she’s seen since her return is an increased need and […]
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This year, Michelle Groulx found herself back at an organization with which she’s very familiar.
After leaving her post as executive director of the Ottawa Coalition of Business Improvement Areas in 2024, Groulx rejoined the group earlier this year as its chief advocate. One thing she’s seen since her return is an increased need and desire for BIAs to advocate on issues ranging from transit and public safety to community-building and return-to-office.
OBJ spoke with Groulx about what affected Ottawa’s businesses the most in 2025 and what the priorities will be for OCOBIA as the city heads into a municipal election year.
The transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: What were the highlights of 2025 for OCOBIA and Ottawa’s 18 BIAs?
“Community events were in play, bringing businesses and residents together, so that kind of growth is coming in community-building. Otherwise, this year we’ve been getting into supporting small businesses more openly by having the very first small business summit in partnership with Invest Ottawa and the Ottawa Board of Trade. We’re also seeing immense growth within our BIA membership in 2025. Some of that is purely from the geographic growth and expansion of a few BIAs. I don’t have specific numbers, but our membership grew from approximately 6,400 businesses to over 7,100 businesses.”
Q: What were some of your concerns or things that could have been improved in 2025?
“The hardest thing to control is uncertainty due to external forces, with the biggest one being the announcement of tariffs on our economy. It's hard to prepare for something like that. I see that businesses are making adjustments and recalibrating. Otherwise, the return-to-office announcements from the municipal and provincial governments did impact quite a few BIAs and it's also actually going to direct how they operate in 2026, as well as how they're going to focus their resources and time.”
Q: You came in as chief advocate in June, having previously held OCOBIA’s executive director position. What are you seeing now that may be different than when you held the executive director position?
“This is me wearing my advocacy hat, but I'm seeing that our city needs BIAs for various reasons. When you have a collective of businesses forming a community that's sanctioned by the city and for the province of Ontario, then you have the ability to invest spending into a direct place. So commercial property owners and businesses control the investment of their funds into the local economy. I'm really seeing a need, push and want as we come out of the pandemic, because a lot of business areas that are not official BIAs realize the difference in force of a BIA. As a chief advocate coming back, I'm seeing a lot more people contacting me to form a BIA. So that's another thing that we'll look for in the future.”
Q: What were the issues that were top of mind for small businesses this year?
“Tariffs are one thing, of course, and so modifying where you're getting your inventory from. The other top issue is employment and finding staff. I'm not very in tune with the direct legislation or policies that were formed, but it does impact small businesses who are looking to hire. Also, I just spoke on the Ottawa Police Services Board regarding policing, safety and crime throughout the city. I hate to talk about it publicly too much because I don't want to scare anyone from coming to Ottawa, but you are seeing a lot of businesses impacted by crime this year. That's an issue that we need resolved throughout the city. People believe it's just happening downtown, but there are smash-and-grabs or some type of theft in the suburbs as well. These things are truly impacting businesses’ bottom lines.”
Q: OCOBIA represents all of the city’s BIAs. Are issues in Centretown, for example, different from dealing with the Heart of Orléans or The Village of Carp?
“They're very different. So, for example, when I talk about public issues such as mental health and substance use, you'll see more of those in Centretown and the downtown core. You don't see so much of that in the suburbs. BIAs in the suburbs will have more concerns about what's impacting them, such as drag racing down Main streets in the middle of the night or theft and break-ins.
“You're seeing a larger focus on trying to get people back in the office, because you're trying to serve your markets and mitigating gaps in the amount of people that are walking downtown. You don't see that issue in the suburbs anymore. They used to have the issue of being empty between nine and five, Monday to Friday, but things have changed for them. Their businesses have adapted to a new reality of people working from home. So their concerns will be whether everyone should go back to work in their offices downtown.”
Q: Some BIAs have expanded their borders this year, or at least started rolling out plans to expand. Do you think that trend will continue in 2026 and is there a possibility that we might see new BIAs form for underrepresented areas?
“Some BIAs are looking into expanding their borders. I know that Chinatown, Little Italy, possibly Barrhaven are looking into expansions. There are probably more. In terms of new BIAs, I know one that is already in progress is Cyrville BIA. Cyrville is the area that is right next to St. Laurent Shopping Centre. They're in a well-poised position where they're getting a lot of residential coming in and businesses are looking to form a BIA to build a brand for the area. There are also concerns about criminal activity in the area so they would like to have more of a presence to deter that. I do know of other BIAs that are looking to form, but I won't speak about those ones yet. There’s a possibility that they may not be able to form within the same calendar year, but they’ll be approved to form in 2027.”
Q: We’re coming up on a municipal election next year. What’s OCOBIA’s role going to be during the election to advocate for businesses’ needs?
“For the first time since OCOBIA was formed, we are launching full media campaigns on what our business members are looking for in the next election. The municipal elections are probably the most important to us in terms of what happens on the ground. We're local boards of the City of Ottawa so, as such, we have to remain very impartial. However, we must also be able to communicate what we're looking for and that will differ from different parts of the city. OCOBIA’s role over the next 10 months is going to be talking about and sharing what each area is really looking for as well as what we're looking for citywide. As it pertains to the mayor and city councillors, we have to remain very impartial as a member of council sits on the board of each BIA. It's great for governance, but at the same time we have to basically not give any preferential treatment to any candidate.”
Q: What are OCOBIA’s priorities for 2026?
“In the downtown core and Centretown where you have a lot of offices, our priorities are going to be promoting the use of those office buildings to help as incubators within the lobbies. We saw an example of that at Preston Square with a local Christmas market. It's a great way to serve the office workers that are coming. And then it's a great incubation space to help street-level animation and activity. You've got these giant lobbies that are serving the businesses above them, but from the street view it's not that great. It's not an experience. No one's going to walk down there until it’s time to go in and out of the office. We are also going to be very focused on communicating our wants and desires for the next election to serve our business members.
“We can say that we want a transition to more multi-use neighbourhoods, but we also have to think of activities and things along the way to support those gaps. We have to do it as a city. When you're thinking about the conversion of office to housing or any kind of mixed use, it's not going to happen overnight. It's going to take years and our businesses need support sustaining themselves in that time. One thing I wanted to add was about transportation. We don't think of business and transportation and our transit is critical to get staff from our BIAs around the city. We're looking at an effective system to move employees and customers between BIAs and residential neighbourhoods to get them to work safely and on time. We've heard a lot from our members about this impacting their businesses. If you can't have people coming in on time, it's going to be really hard to hire and retain people. This also includes getting great transit from post-secondary and secondary institutions to our commercial areas. We’ll also be looking at the cost of that transit. We’ll continue to advocate for reliable and affordable transportation in 2026.” 
