Shiller Lavy kills off another business
Eater reports on a St-Viateur bakery priced out by Shiller Lavy, who hiked its rent by 55%. Haven’t seen anything lately about rent controls for commercial leases, but maybe it’s time.
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Kate
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Ian 09:55 on 2019-07-04 Permalink
Don’t hold your breath. The city makes more money when commercial rents go up. Considering it’s one of their primary sources of revenue, I doubt they will lift a finger. For all that they flap their jaws about slowing gentrification they aren’t doing a thing to keep Saint Viateur from turning into Yorkville.
fliflipoune 11:50 on 2019-07-04 Permalink
@Ian Except the city doesn’t make any money from rent increase. The city doesn’t even make money if the rent increase make the value of the building goes up. The only advantage for the city, is IF commercial buildings goes up in price faster than residential buildings, giving residential buildings a tax break and making voters happy. It’s a big if. And even then, that’s not new money.
Ephraim 12:00 on 2019-07-04 Permalink
What the city needs to do is set a high tax rate for empty businesses…. to discourage having empty spots.
Kate 20:07 on 2019-07-04 Permalink
Ephraim, while the Eater story does note that a spinoff of Shiller Lavy pushed the Cagibi out of its spot on St-Viateur, a spot that’s been vacant ever since – to the detriment of the street, I have to say – and it would be beneficial if there were a deterrent to doing this, that wouldn’t solve the problem we’re discussing. Shiller Lavy is not interested in the fabric of a neighbourhood or in the vitality of local businesses or the quality of street life – they are interested in a buck. They’d rather put a boring chain store in and collect $6000 a month, and they’re willing to push out a local independent and hold the store empty for a year to get it.
I worry sometimes that they’re also playing a long game, where if they can get independents to vacate and leave buildings empty, they’ll simply start tearing things down.
But the problem under discussion isn’t vacancies, it’s pushing out viable businesses that give character to a street, risking turning all our nice secondary commercial streets into carbon copies of the same boring mall.
Since what they’re doing is legal, I don’t see how the city can stop it.
Do any cities have laws against real estate monopolies on commercial streets? I wish we had one.
Ephraim 20:36 on 2019-07-04 Permalink
Kate – It would discourage pushing someone out and leaving empty spots. Shiller Lavy has done this in other areas where the stores have sat empty for months. Masson was like this for a while.
david100 22:48 on 2019-07-04 Permalink
Barring chain stores like SF and NYC do in some areas would shrink the pool of available tenants for these landlords and drive down commercial rents.
Ian 08:03 on 2019-07-05 Permalink
@fliflipoune you said “The city doesn’t even make money if the rent increase make the value of the building goes up.” How do you figure? Increased property value means more property tax, one of the city’s main sources of revenue.
thomas 11:23 on 2019-07-05 Permalink
I suspect Shillar Levy is going to the bank and taking out loans on his properties based on some inflated rent calculations. Interest rates are still low right now so he can take that money and invest it elsewhere — maybe buying up other properties. Then it is better to keep the space empty and forego rental revenue in order to keep the conditions of his bank loan intact.