City holds sessions about vacant storefronts
Vacant storefronts are a chronic blight on our commercial streets, with vacancies rising as high as 26% on St-Denis. The city is holding some public consultations about it. One unnamed official cites “rising rent, real estate speculation and a general preference to shop online”; it’s obvious that having one real estate company own and control all the commercial frontage on some streets is bad for the city, but how do you counter that?
DeWolf 11:43 on 2019-12-11 Permalink
The first solution proposed (“baliser les artères commerciales”) is a classic example of good intentions that can lead to disastrous results. Too many restrictions on what can and can’t open on a commercial street simply makes it harder to those streets to thrive. There’s a reasonable amount of regulation needed, but once you use zoning to start tinkering with the commercial makeup of a street you risk killing the very things that make it a popular place to be.
A common example is the mandatory 25-metre spacing between restaurants on streets like Parc, St-Laurent and Notre-Dame. Those regulations were passed to prevent a glut of restaurants and bars that caused a lot of noise and pushed out everyday businesses. But they also force business owners to play a complicated game of hopscotch in order to find a space, which has arguably perpetuated the problem of vacant retail spaces. Omnivore at St‑Laurent/Marie-Anne needs to move from their current building, which requires major renovations, and they found a suitable space just down the street, but because it’s located within 25m of an existing restaurant they aren’t allowed to move there. Now they’re stuck and meanwhile an empty space is still waiting to find tenants.
The proposal also suggests restricting the number of commercial streets. This is an old trick that was used in the 1980s when there was a surge in commercial vacancies due to a weak economy. The municipal administration at the time wanted to rezone a bunch of neighbourhood commercial streets residential in order to concentrate activity on main arteries. That would have spelled the end of St-Viateur if it hadn’t been for neighbourhood activists who opposed the changes.
For the record the other three proposals listed in the La Presse article sound perfectly productive and reasonable to me.
PO 13:15 on 2019-12-11 Permalink
The solution is to make me king, then I create a rule saying that if a storefront on a commercial strip is vacant for more than 6 months, the owner must decrease his asking price on rent by 8.33% every month until he’s able to find tenants. If after 6 months of this, there are no new tenants, the owner must pay a fee of 16.6% of his current asking price to the lessees of the buildings immediately to his left, right, and across from the empty storefront.
I don’t know if it would work, but it would be fun.
Joey 14:10 on 2019-12-11 Permalink
There’s a story making the rounds on social media about a series of fines that have been issued to the four record stores near Bernard (three I think are on Bernard) in Mile-End (Phonopolis, etc.). Fines for things like being open past 5pm, displaying a sandwich board on the sidewalk, taking out the recycling early, etc. The owners can’t even get confirmation that they are subject to the regulations they are accused of having violated, mostly because the regs don’t necessarily apply for a variety of potential reasons, such as the store’s being located in a tourist area (hello Mile-End walking tours). The NY Times literally wrote an article about the life and death of this specific street and some over-zealous inspectors are going to see to it that local indie shops that prop up the art scene Montreal cashes in on at every turn all over the globe will have to fold – all because they sell records past 5pm. The City doesn’t need consultations, it needs a good, long look in the mirror. Isn’t Jimmy Zoubris, local merchant and Val Plante “fixer”/senior advisor, supposed to be around precisely to to avoid this kind of nonsense?
Douglas 14:34 on 2019-12-11 Permalink
The commercial taxes are way too high.
Some of these tenants have to eat $1000 a month in taxes because the commercial tax portion alone on these buildings is over $10 000 / year.
The city loves jacking up the valuations every single year and love all that tax money (4x the residential rate) they are raking in from businesses, but the city at the same time doesn’t like the vacancies?
Can’t have your cake and eat it too.
Kate 20:30 on 2019-12-11 Permalink
So we need commercial rent controls.