Mia Jensen
Mia Jensen reports on how real estate projects, retail corridors and city-building decisions reshape the business landscape in Ottawa for the Ottawa Business Journal. She is a reporter with the masthead, covering development applications, mixed-use towers, housing projects and the commercial streets and districts most affected by those changes. Her stories use specific properties, business closures, entrepreneurs and civic initiatives as case studies to surface broader trends in investment, policy and urban life.
Mixed-use towers and residential highrises
Jensen’s real estate coverage centres on concrete projects, with a focus on how individual developments will alter neighbourhoods and local markets.
In her report on Inside Edge Properties’ plan to build two mixed-use highrises near St. Laurent Shopping Centre, she details the proposal’s location, tower heights and the blend of residential and commercial uses, grounding the story in the formal planning process while explaining what the project means for the surrounding area. Her piece on the proposed third tower at the Maison Riverain development in Vanier similarly walks through site plan filings, unit counts, the phased construction schedule and the addition of commercial space and a public park, giving readers a clear view of the scale and timing of change on Montreal Road. Coverage of a local developer awaiting provincial approval for a project in Bells Corners shows the same method: she traces the regulatory steps, timelines and local expectations, highlighting how provincial decisions and municipal processes intersect with a developer’s plans.
Across these stories, Jensen consistently connects planning documents and applications to tangible outcomes such as new housing supply, street-level retail and public amenities.
Downtown retail vacancies and corridor shifts
Jensen follows the fortunes of downtown retail and key commercial corridors, documenting how macro forces translate into empty storefronts, relocations and reinvention. In her coverage of mounting retail vacancies as civil service layoffs and uncertain return-to-office mandates loom, she combines market watchers’ commentary with specific examples of properties that are difficult to lease, emphasizing how employment policy and public-sector downsizing weigh on landlords and tenants. Her story on Steve’s Music Store closing its Rideau Street location after 42 years focuses on the lived experience of a long-standing business navigating construction disruptions and changing street dynamics, balancing the manager’s optimism for the area with the hard decision to move. A feature on Hair Republic’s search for a “new growth method” after its Hudson’s Bay Rideau Street salon closure shows how an independent brand responds to a major anchor tenant’s departure, exploring both the loss of a high-traffic space and the strategic choices required to rebuild.
Together, these pieces present Jensen as a reporter who tracks corridors over time, chronicling how individual shops and salons embody the pressures and possibilities facing downtown retail real estate.
Housing, elections and city-building policy
Beyond project-by-project coverage, Jensen situates real estate in broader debates over housing and municipal governance. Her report on a symposium where local real estate leaders argue that housing issues will be central in an upcoming municipal election ties voter concerns to zoning, supply and affordability, showing how campaign narratives reflect structural challenges in the housing market. In examining lessons from the amalgamation period, she looks at long-term city-building, drawing out arguments that past decisions on boundaries, infrastructure and planning still shape current development and service delivery.
Articles on large multi-tower residential projects, such as Maison Riverain, extend this perspective by connecting thousands of new units and added park space to questions of how neighbourhoods absorb growth and how policy frameworks enable or constrain that growth. This strand of her work presents Jensen as someone who can move from site plans and unit counts to the political and historical context that makes those numbers matter.
Tourism investment, growth companies and entrepreneurs
Jensen also covers how investment and entrepreneurship intersect with the region’s physical and economic landscape.
Her piece on Ottawa Tourism’s push to attract more private investors into city projects explains the agency’s effort to borrow tactics from the tech sector, linking funding structures to the creation of new attractions that change how visitors experience the city. In her coverage of the Fastest Growing Companies awards, she profiles firms across sectors, highlighting revenue growth and business strategies while grounding the story in the local business environment and its opportunities for expansion. Features on entrepreneurs, such as the story following Mat Slaman’s progression from building pirate ships to launching floating saunas, show her eye for distinctive concepts that blend leisure, design and place-making, illustrating how individual ventures can reshape waterfronts and public spaces.
Taken together, these articles show Jensen extending her real estate lens into tourism, high-growth businesses and experiential ventures, with an emphasis on how ideas become physical projects and sustained enterprises.
Before joining the Ottawa Business Journal, Jensen reported on health, mining, business and the arts for a regional daily and held roles in communications and cultural research, experience that informs her ability to move comfortably between policy, market data and human stories. Across her current work, she maintains a consistent focus on the intersection of property, commerce and civic life, using precise detail and grounded examples to show how decisions about buildings and streets affect employers, workers and residents.
4 more real estate journalists.
Addie Morfoot
Addie Morfoot covers how real estate, culture and media meet, focusing on people, rules and the way homes shape a life. She reports for The New York Times on housing and lifestyle, from personal narratives about finding a home after loss to features on how short-term rental policy affects everyday owners and renters. She writes real estate stories that connect laws and regulations to the choices available to ordinary residents in specific towns and cities. She is a regular contributor to the Sunday Routine franchise, following actors, comedians and designers through a typical day and showing how settings like homes, studios and subway cars shape daily experience. She also has a long track record covering documentary film and the entertainment business, including legal questions around fair use, changing docu-series formats, festival premieres and financing. Her portfolio spans more than two decades of work for The New York Times, Variety, The Wall Street Journal and Crain’s New York Business.
Alcynna Lloyd
Alcynna Lloyd is a real estate reporter and economic journalist at Business Insider whose work is distinct for treating housing as a core economic system people must navigate. She covers how housing markets, costs, and mobility shape everyday life decisions, connecting data on rents, home prices, and city trends with stories of people managing debt, multigenerational living, and moves abroad. Her beat centers on housing costs, renters, and household strategies, following renters pushing back against landlords and tracking “desperate home sellers” using concessions in unaffordable markets. A second strand of her coverage focuses on relocation, remote work, and cheap cities as everyday economic strategies. She regularly uses rankings and lists, such as best and worst states to buy a home and Rising Stars of Real Estate, and reads city housing and migration shifts as signs of broader economic change.
Alec Lazenby
Alec Lazenby covers how provincial politics and government decisions shape housing, real estate and the wider social fabric. He reports for The Vancouver Sun from the provincial legislature. His work examines HousingHub, middle-income rentals, affordability, stalled projects, empty condos, developer layoffs, municipal housing targets and land use. He also covers health, addiction, safer supply, involuntary care, water rights, resource management, Indigenous rights and Crown land. Lazenby connects policy language to specific buildings, rents, projects, services and people. He explains financial, regulatory and market pressures, then follows how institutions, professionals, developers, municipalities and affected communities respond. His reporting tests government goals against practical outcomes and shows how policy reversals, construction costs, interest rates and political accountability shape housing and public life.
Amir Ali
Amir Ali links housing, disputes, and oddball neighbourhood stories in case-based, street-level reporting for Daily Hive. He holds a senior editorial and writing role, listed on the masthead as part of Vancouver leadership and described as a staff writer. His core beat is real estate, especially the rental market and housing affordability, tracking rent ranges, market shifts, and how pressures land on people trying to stay housed. He also covers crime, civil tribunals, and mental health, explaining decisions and conflicts in plain language that focuses on timelines, behaviour, and outcomes. Ali writes offbeat hyperlocal features, traffic and transport disruptions, business, food, and general local news, often turning infrastructure, small businesses, and civic systems into tangible stories. A former radio producer, he brings tight pacing and clear stakes to written pieces and maintains an active social media presence as a broadcaster and writer.