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Continue south on King Street and make a right at Victoria Street. You’ll see the UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO’S SCHOOL OF PHARMACY on your right and the KAUFMAN LOFTS on your left. The Kaufman Rubber Company, a shoe manufacturing company, was built in stages between 1908 and 1925, then was renovated into the Kaufman Lofts in 2006. The Kaufman Lofts were the epicentre of the revitalization of the downtown Kitchener core — and now shares the skyline with office buildings and condo towers. Your tour continues down Victoria Street to the Tannery building at 151 Charles Street. The building was the site of the Lang Tanning Company founded in the mid-1880’s and once the largest tannery in the British Empire. Over the years, the building housed everything from an indoor paintball course to performance rehearsal space. It’s now home to education tech leader D2L, the UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO’S VELOCITY startup space and COMMUNITECH. Communitech is a not-for-profit organization that develops programming to help tech companies in Waterloo Region start, grow and succeed. Combined, Communitech and Velocity have over 117,000 square feet of space for tech companies of all sizes and stages. Communitech offers public tours on Thursday and they are a great way to see what attracts companies to the area. You can book tours at http://communitech.ca. After your tour, you don’t have to go far to refresh yourself. Stay in the Tannery and enjoy a craft beer brewed on-site at the ABE ERB brew pub. You’ll find our growing community to be an amazingly welcoming group of people who love to share what they make!
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ONE OF THE BEST WAYS TO EXPERIENCE THE CHANGES IN WATERLOO REGION IS TO TAKE A WALK FROM UPTOWN WATERLOO TO DOWNTOWN KITCHENER.
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Traditional folk music is celebrated in Cambridge at the Mill Race Festival. Taking place in August, the Mill Race Festival models itself on traditional outdoor European festivals with stages set up around the city. Our local arts scene has benefited from the growth in the Region. Downtown Kitchener is home to the Centre in the Square performing arts centre, the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony and the world renowned annual TD Kitchener Blues Festival. The downtown core is also home to Green Light Arts, a theatre company created by two artists who moved to the city from Toronto. The Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery brings exhibitions from both local and international artists to the area throughout the year — with a focus on contemporary culture. Our culinary scene has also benefited from the growth in students, tech workers and their families. Traditional German restaurants line the same streets with African, Asian and even southern soul-food inspired culinary experiences. If you want to sample a piece of Waterloo Region’s past and future, then you don’t have to look further than Victoria Street in Kitchener. You can have a late breakfast served on counters that have seen sixty years of diners at the landmark Jimmy’s Lunch at 297 Victoria St N, Kitchener. After lunch, you can head three doors down for a craft beer at Descendants Beer and Beverage at 319 Victoria St N, Kitchener, opened by Dublin-born Robin Molloy in 2016. There’s a lot to do and even more to taste when you visit Waterloo Region — hope you enjoy!
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ne of the best ways to experience the changes in Waterloo Region is to take a walk from Uptown Waterloo to Downtown Kitchener. The tour will take you just over an hour. To begin, head to the PERIMETER INSTITUTE FOR THEORETICAL PHYSICS located at 31 Caroline Street North in Waterloo. There’s parking available at the Waterloo Public Library next door or at the Uptown Waterloo Parkade on King Street. Founded in 1999 by BlackBerry co-founder Mike Lazaridis, the Institute is one of the world’s premier centres for physics research. British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, a Distinguished Visiting Research Chair at the Perimeter Institute, has been known to visit the Duke of Wellington Pub in the Shops at Waterloo Town Square. Head south on Caroline Street to Erb Street and you’ll come to the former Seagram Distillery at 57 Erb Street West, now home to SHOPIFY PLUS. The world’s leader in e-commerce set up shop in the renovated space in 2016 and now employs over two hundred developers, designers and salespeople. Originally opened in 1857, the distillery was active until the early 1980s. It housed a museum and then the Centre for International Governance Innovation before becoming the home to the Shopify team. Next, head northeast on Erb Street and right on King Street and make a coffee stop at SETTLEMENT CO. at 23 King Street North. Settlement Co. roasts their beans on-site where you’ll find artists bumping elbows with tech workers thanks to their in-table wireless chargers. Grab your coffee to go and head south on King Street along the ION light rail transit route. You’ll walk by the renovated Bauer Building — now home to condos, restaurants and shops, where you’ll find the best sandwiches in Waterloo. VINCENZO’S at 150 Caroline Street features daily pop-up vendors — but is known for their sandwich counter. Avoid the lunch rush if you can — workers from around the area dominate the counter during the lunch hour. After you’ve enjoyed your sandwich, continue south on King Street past Grand River Hospital to 51 Breithaupt Street in Kitchener, home of GOOGLE Kitchener-Waterloo. The award-winning development of the former factory buildings is a sight to behold. The front of the building is a newly constructed glass facade that flows into the renovated brick and beam factory building.
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