About one-third of downtown Edmonton retail space is sitting vacant, says a new University of Alberta report.

U of A researchers counted the space manually by walking along the city’s core streets in May. Heather Thomson, executive-director of the U of A’s Centre for Cities and Communities, attributed the high vacancy to the downtown’s large size.

“The number is one-third, but there’s also a lot of things taking place to cause that,” Thomson told the Edmonton Journal. “We just have a lot of space to deal with, and I think the encouraging thing is there is a lot of focus on this, lots of investment is going into this, and we are starting to see the upswing.”

More downtown residents would solve the problem, said Thomson, but multi-residential development would take years to complete.

She called on all levels of government, businesses and other organizations to make some changes in the meantime. First steps would include beautification, right-sizing and right-spacing of existing spaces, Thomson contended.