Mile End: no, the crisis is not over

The general principle that the correct answer to a question asked in a headline is always “no” continues to hold, when La Presse asks Fin de la crise des locaux vacants dans le Mile End? Coming hot on the heels of stories about vacancies peppering the main streets of that neighbourhood (Bernard and St-Viateur get talked about, but parts of Park Avenue have been looking pretty hollow too for awhile), this unaccountably perky piece talks about the taco place coming to the old Cagibi corner (to open in May) and some unnamed entity who may have rented the old De Gaulle bakery corner location. There’s a lot of talk about the taco restaurant’s other location (main takeaway: it’s cheaper to rent commercial digs in the Old Port than on St-V) and the owner’s big plans for a chain, which simply confirms the general observation that if you want to rent on Shiller Lavy territory, you’d better have deep pockets.