Shopping streets are doing well
Quebec’s local shopping streets are doing surprisingly well just now, in terms of business and of vacancies. There’s a list of Montreal street vacancies at the bottom: St‑Denis is still suffering a little at 10.6% vacancy but many are below 5% with Jarry clocking in at an amazing 0% vacancy rate.
Meezly 09:30 on 2021-10-28 Permalink
Hopefully the holiday season will benefit local shops.
Shoplifting may be on the rise – the General 54 boutique was recently hit hard when 2 shoplifters made off with $1500 worth of goods. On their FB page, there’s a video of the thieves in action and they’re hoping to identify them.
Kate 09:43 on 2021-10-28 Permalink
Wow, those two thieves were slick. If they pulled this off so seamlessly in such a small boutique, they’re doing it to others as well.
The owners ought to be looking out on resale sites – FB marketplace, eBay, Etsy and so on – to see whether any of the pieces is put up for sale. I doubt the thieves were doing it to replenish their own wardrobes.
DeWolf 10:23 on 2021-10-28 Permalink
St-Denis had a vacancy rate of 23% in 2019. That has been cut by more than half over the pandemic which is pretty incredible. And yet this article features a lengthy quote from a disgruntled clothing store employee who claims the street is “dead.” The trend is just the opposite – in a few years, we’ll be seeing headlines about the renaissance of St-Denis.
There were a few commercial strips that were hit badly during the pandemic, like Notre-Dame in St-Henri, but they all seem to have bounced back. The only one I can think of that is still really struggling is Notre-Dame in Lachine, but it’s about to go through a major overhaul that will improve the pedestrian environment. There’s also a lot of new development around there that will probably boost its fortunes.
Mr.Chinaski 10:48 on 2021-10-28 Permalink
Notre-Dame in Lachine is somehow going well… and not well at the same time. You can see some hope (Library, quality thrift-store, small independant take-out eating places), but at the same time, it’ll take 10 years before we see Lachine-Est being a true neighborhood, and 10 years before any kind of fast-transport to downtown (SRB/Tramway/anything) on Victoria avenue.
Lower-Lachine is getting gentrified very slowly because it’s about the only place near downtown that you can still buy at an “acceptable” price, the poorer people getting kicked out the same way Verdun did it in the past 5-10 years.
j2 12:49 on 2021-10-28 Permalink
Saint Henri is really interesting because of the number of places that opened during the pandemic. I thought for sure it was dead – new businesses with recently raised rents – but it’s startling how many opened.
We’ll know nature is truly healed when windows get broken in the name of anti-gentrification.
Phil M 05:57 on 2021-10-29 Permalink
“Note that Côté Mercier’s study does not take Sainte-Catherine Street into account. The firm says it preferred to remove it from its analysis because of the numerous works and the impact on traders.”
Yeah, that’s BS. Leave out the single most important shopping street that is experiencing the worst effects due to all the crazy construction.
Kate 10:47 on 2021-10-29 Permalink
They made a legitimate choice, Phil M. While parts of Ste‑Catherine may be in a sense local shopping for downtown dwellers, it’s altogether a more major shopping nexus than, say, Masson or Wellington. I see why it could have been deemed to distort the stats.
Joey 11:32 on 2021-10-29 Permalink
For the time being, Ste-Catherine is a major outlier and would have to have been excluded from any generalizations based on the analysis. I suppose they could have included it but any conclusions drawn about it would reveal little more than how the street’s merchants are managing during mega-construction.