Own It

Late last year I was contacted by the Downtown Kitchener BIA (thanks, Hilary!) about doing some photography for their new Own It publication which tells the stories of some of our downtown’s business leaders and go-getters. Everything from new restaurants to a movie theatre revival to an arts and culture hub are covered in this issue.

My contribution was shooting Vidyard’s future office space, 8 Queen, as well as some portraits of the developers, brothers Steve and Frank Voisin of Voisin Capital. I shot in late January when it was still under major construction, but that still led to some nice photo ops for the portraits both of the brothers and the space.

Frank and Steve gave me a tour of the whole building which is the former Goudie’s Department Store. I was surprised at how large the space was, but considering it used to be a department store, it kind of makes sense. There’s talk of possibly having a restaurant near the back of the building, along with a glass entrance off Goudie’s Lane. The top floor, covered in tarp at the time, will have a wall of glass facing Queen Street which should be pretty spectacular. The book has a rendering to show what it’ll look like; I can’t wait to see it finished.

I was pretty thrilled when I was asked to contribute to the magazine, and happy to see some friends including Cindy, Darin (see his post here), Dean, Sylvia, Jude, and Jon as a part of the issue as well. There’s a lot going on downtown and this magazine shows off a lot of what’s happening. It’s an exciting time to see the core going through such a major transformation. Get down there!