Some background: A while ago they were told by their landlord that their rent would triple, or else they'd have to leave. The landlords apparently thought that they should be getting more rent because of the location. There was a change.org petition to allow them to stay. I signed it, even though those tend to be of limited use. As it happened, they got a few months' worth extension, but a few weeks ago they did close their doors.
The thing is, this is not really a posh location. It's nice enough, but the street at least on this side of the hill is a few modest homeowners and a lot of renters, plus a couple of small housing projects. People assume that all of the East Side is ritzy, but it's a little more heterogeneous than that. So any new business that came in paying the rent that it seems like they were asking for would have found out soon that the overhead was too high. Maybe the property owners realized that. I hope so, and I hope there are realizations like that everywhere.
1 comment:
It seems a lot of property owners have been trying to extract unearned profits from buildings they own. I know that part of the city and you're right that it's at a lower scale than one might assume based on its location on a map - 'a map is not the territory' the saying goes.
One of the things we've noticed around here similar to what the owners of the pizza building attempted is that long standing businesses have been forced to leave the locations where they've done business for many years. Sometimes it's happened because rents have been raised beyond any hope of paying and still be able to function.
The other thing that would be amusing if it weren't so sad is when entire blocks are sold to developers who build large apartment blocks and then sell the prospective tenants the story that the place is part of a vibrant community close to shopping, restaurants, and other small businesses when that's no longer true. There's an enormous block downtown where they've done exactly that, closing a number of retail outlets including a large drug store, a grocery store, several restaurants, a watch repair place etc. etc.
Of course, our civic leaders appear to be under the impression that Victoria will turn into Vancouver west (not West Vancouver) in a very short time frame. It may get that big eventually but not by next week. Sometimes I miss living in a low-key city like Providence where landlords have time to see the folly of their plans and act accordingly.
Nothing like an east coast pizza!
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