The Walrus on empty storefronts
The Walrus has a good piece on the damage caused by empty storefronts to the fabric of a neighbourhood, with the Mile End given as one of the examples, and discussion of what cities should do about the problem.
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Kate
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SMD 21:56 on 2021-07-24 Permalink
Two excellent petitions are up at http://www.sauvermontreal.com to address this and related real-estate issues.
david874 12:32 on 2021-07-25 Permalink
I’d like to point out that I’ve been banging the empty storefront drum for something like a decade now, and my beat is pretty simple:
Tax empty storefronts. While the pandemic is not an ideal time to do this, it must nonetheless go forward. You’ll need a system that determines fair efforts to let at reasonable rents, but there should be significant fines associated with letting a place sit empty rather than letting it at market value at the time of vacancy.
Bar formula retail in most domains. Chains will pay more and the prospect of having a chain move in will incentivize a landlord to jack up rents and leave spaces empty holding out for a formula retain lessee.
Ta-tam!
That Walrus article is very confused, like veers from a real problem into this other issue of neighborhood “control” – which will mean limiting or preventing the development that’ll keep rents down. It might be intuitive to say “hey, the way this neighborhood looks when I moved in is the way it should stay” but what happens when your lockdown of growth has pushed rents up so high that your landlord has every incentive to renovict you?
Also, I would point out that curb cuts are just as bad as vacant storefronts and we should bar any parking minimums in new development as more destructive to the urban fabric than any worry people have about road congestion or increased competition for street parking.
jeather 17:35 on 2021-07-25 Permalink
Curb cuts, like the ramp where people in wheelchairs can get off the sidewalk or back on? What is objectionable about those?
David74 I 17:37 on 2021-07-25 Permalink
I think you know that I’m talking about parking ingresses.
MarcG 18:22 on 2021-07-25 Permalink
I didn’t know what curb cuts were and the internet told me they were for accessibility.
Tim S. 18:25 on 2021-07-25 Permalink
I think David is talking about driveways to indoor parking lots and so on, which are terrible (having been almost run over by someone turning into one while I was minding my own business on the sidewalk). If so, I agree that those should be reduced as much as possible, they’re basically mini-intersections in the middle of blocks.
jeather 21:38 on 2021-07-25 Permalink
I would absolutely never call those curb cuts and did not know what you were talking about.