Arthur Quentin owner deplores lack of support
Housewares boutique Arthur Quentin is closing after 43 years on St-Denis, and the owner deplores the lack of support from the city but the brief text here doesn’t clarify what kind of help the owner wanted. Arthur Quentin had an upscale ambiance, but you could get quality kitchen tools there at a good price. I still have a few things I bought there when I lived around the corner. Link has text and an audio interview.
Steve Q 09:17 on 2019-03-16 Permalink
A tax break is surely what the owner meant. Businesses are heavily taxed in this city, as a matter of fact, Montreal has the biggest business tax in North America. Very counter productive.
Its a miracle she has managed to hold on for so long but as she is saying, she hasnt made any profit for a long time, thus explaining why no one wants to buy her store. So we are likely to see another empty local on Saint-Denis for a long time. In the mean time, expect mayors and councillors to crticized the Royalmount project. Much easier to do than to fix problems like Saint-Denis street per example.
Kate 09:29 on 2019-03-16 Permalink
We simply don’t have laws allowing the city to shape neighbourhoods as some of us would like. I don’t think within the current framework we can write tax laws allowing independent stores to pay less tax than chains or franchises, for example, although that kind of arrangement would benefit the city. (And chains and franchises would find loopholes pretty fast, I imagine.)
Uatu 10:49 on 2019-03-16 Permalink
Royalmount needs a review. the DIX30 is carbon Leo’s success story in the south shore and it’s a traffic cluster fuck even with the space of the suburbs and it will get even worse because a small city of condos will be surrounding the new REM station in the area which means more traffic. Carbon Leo’s idea of planning is to point a finger at a map while blindfolded.
I don’t know how st. Denis can be revived all I know is that the combo of royalmount and Amazon means no one with cash is going to drag themselves downtown to st. Denis from TMR.
Bill Binns 11:02 on 2019-03-16 Permalink
The idea that so called “independent” businesses somehow benefit the city or it’s residents more than franchise or corporate stores is a myth. I have never read an explanation of how this is supposed to work. Franchise stores are almost always owned by locals and of course employ locals, pay local taxes etc. A franchised store is simply a locally owned business that is renting a proven business model and participating in a national marketing campaign. It’s a shortcut to taking 20-30 years to establish your own reputation.
Kate 11:13 on 2019-03-16 Permalink
Bill Binns, fill St-Denis with predictable franchise outlets and there won’t be anything quirky, individual or independent to attract people away from the convenience and parking at the malls.
St-Denis used to have so many independent places – just off the top of my head, from living around the corner: Arthur Quentin, Bleu Nuit, La Cache, Giraffe, Kaliyana, Sarah Clothes, Louise Decarie’s incomparable candy store, Sena – the good shoe store at Rachel – that are now gone. Despite living nearby I didn’t shop along there very much because it tended to be expensive, but it sure was nice to bring visitors along there and it was great for the occasional purchase for a treat or a gift.
Before Amazon, before Etsy, these shops used to attract a wide range of shoppers from all over town. Arthur Quentin was always full of people on weekends, buying beautiful kitchenwares.
If you don’t remember the vibe, the closest we have now is Laurier from Outremont through to the Main, but it’s not the same.
Bill Binns 11:34 on 2019-03-16 Permalink
@Kate, It doesn’t have to be one or the other. There is plenty of vacancy on St Denis and either national franchises or local shops would be a great improvement. A mix is ideal. National chains generate massive amounts of traffic that benefits all of the businesses in a given area. The presence of national chains in a commercial area telegraphs a certain amount of safety, the availability of bathrooms etc.
I have probably posted this before but see this article talking about how independent coffee shops located near Starbucks actually do better than those that have a neighborhood to themselves.
https://consumerist.com/2007/12/29/want-a-thriving-coffee-shop-open-next-to-a-starbucks/
Chris 12:38 on 2019-03-16 Permalink
“Despite living nearby I didn’t shop along there very much”, well that about sums it up. If even locals don’t shop there, who’s going to travel across the city to some quirky store, when the internet has plenty of quirks that can ship it to you the next day.
Kate 16:23 on 2019-03-16 Permalink
Chris: I was talking about not shopping there much in the late 1980s and 1990s, before online shopping, and before the Plateau became so expensive. I was able to afford to live nearby then, but I’ve never been a big shopper anywhere at any time. I did buy things along there occasionally.
Several intersecting problems are plaguing that street: high rents, high taxes, the competition of malls with parking and internet retail. I have no solutions.
Ian 18:59 on 2019-03-16 Permalink
Laurier West has also lost some of its funk as prices have gone up. Not much left but precious boutiques. Between St Urbain and Parc the toy store moved up to Bernard, the jewellery store moved to St. Larry, the shoe repair store closed down, so did the nice Chinese florist. Not quite as bad as Lululemon and David’s Tea invading Saint Viateur but Shiller-Lavy seems to own all the empty storefronts from Parc to Saint Larry so it’s only a matter of time before it turns into another Yorkville.
Saint Larry took decades to come back after the roadwork but I’m sure Saint Denis will come back, too. It will take a while, but you can’t deny the cachet of a main street.
Jo Walton 19:01 on 2019-03-16 Permalink
Bill, I think I can explain this in a way you that may help you get it.
Everyone buys the things the franchise stores sell. But only some people want the things in the quirky stores. But people will buy their boring things in the franchise stores next to particular quirky stores because they’re there to go to the quirky store so they pick up the boring thing while they’re there. The quirky stores have things that everywhere doesn’t have, so it’s worth going out for, and going there from where they live. You can think of them like “loss leaders”. I’ve read that it’s worth supermarkets having exotic fruit in their fruit section even if they throw 100% of it away, because people like to see it sufficiently that they’ll chose a store that has it over one that doesn’t. Similarly, a comic store or a stained glass store will keep a neighbourhood vibrant even while losing money themselves. Therefore it would be worth cities giving them a break.
I saw the downtown of Cardiff, Wales,become revitalised by a policy of not charging property taxes for the first year an indie business is in a location. Hardly any of the shops made it — bonsai shop, sheet music shop — but suddenly I wanted to go shopping there rather than where I lived because even if I was only buying the same franchise things I liked looking at the bonsai shop, and in fact the excellent new second-hand bookshop where I did spend money is still there twenty years later.
Nobody is going to cross town to go to Starbucks, but I cross town all the time to go to Camellia Sinensis.
Ian 19:05 on 2019-03-16 Permalink
Excellent points. I go all the way to NDG for Encore Books even though I live a block away form the excellent S.W. Welch bookstore as they have different stuff – but I have a Starbucks 5 minutes from me, Starbucks isn’t going to draw me to another neighbourhood.
Kevin 22:52 on 2019-03-16 Permalink
Indeed. Arthur Quentin and Valet de Coeur were two stores I visited every time I went to St Denis because they had items that were difficult to find anywhere else.
In my neighbourhood I used to have 3 different places to get tea. Now those shops are all gone, and they have been replaced by Davids Tea.
But I think the idea Ephraim has espoused several times could work: penalize owners who leave storefronts vacant ( because they are just using them to declare a loss for some other aspect of their business, so screw ’em: they are deliberately making a neighbourhood undesireable).
Steve Q 23:10 on 2019-03-16 Permalink
Bill, the main reason why independant businesses benefit a city is simply because it gives a city or a neighborhood character. Why would you go to a street when all you see is chain like any other malls or streets like NY or Vegas or Miami or Chicago etc…? But if most of the businesses are owned and managed locally, then it brings a lot more flavour and it makes it a lot more interesting.
Secondly, even if a chain is a franchised, it still sends money somewhere else. A small portion maybe, but still. And I just hate to go to a restaurant knowing 2 or 3 or 5% of my bill will be sent somewhere in London, NY or elsewhere.
Ephraim 08:21 on 2019-03-17 Permalink
Exactly Kevin, it breaks the fabric of the city. There is a building on the corner of Amherst and St-Catherine that used to be a bank. The owner holds on to it, as the value of the building increases, but often it’s empty because it’s not really a great rentable location or the rent is set too high. Punish those places that are unrented, that break the fabric of the neighbourhood, so that landlords lower rent and/or rent to pop-up shops.
How many Shiler-Lavy signs do we need to see in windows?
Kate 09:54 on 2019-03-17 Permalink
Jo Walton: thank you for writing that, it’s a first-rate explanation.
Ian: I was struck walking along there Saturday how the loss of the Patisserie de Gascogne has deadened Laurier east of Park.
Ian 17:34 on 2019-03-17 Permalink
Yeah it’s a shame we lost Gascogne, I especially miss the bostoks and abricotines – but that lurid tale of interfamilial deceit isn’t because of gentrification. That it still stands empty, however, along with the imported furniture store that used to be beside it…. There used to be Shiller-Lavy signs up but they have been taken down as people had started to write anti-gentrification graffiti on them.