MONTERAL – Sainte-Catherine street on downtown Montreal used to be the capital of shopping across the country.
Yet, the usually busy street is now lined with boarded up stores and “for rent” signs.
“I know my girlfriend, she orders everything off of Amazon,” said one shopper.
“No matter what it is.”
Rental fees along the strip range between 150 to 200 dollars per square foot.
That means only the biggest household names can afford to set up stop and stay in business.
Sam Sheraton, of Rester Inc., says he has never had to wait a few months before renting out a massive location on Sainte-Catherine.
A few years ago, this was completely unheard.
Now, a number of factors has made it more and more difficult for merchants to survive.
These include the never ending construction, the lack of parking and commercial property taxes that are consistently double the rate of inflation.
“The last couple of years we got hit with a lot of issues,” said Sheraton.
“The economy is down. We had the student protest to deal with which blocked off a lot of downtown too. So it’s been going downhill, there’s no question.”
Online shopping has become to biggest threat to a lot of brick and mortar retailers.
The Chapters in downtown Toronto is slated to close at the end of May, and most of Hudson Bay’s sales are generated online.
“They’re reporting a 50 percent increase,” said Maureen Atkinson of JC Williams Group.
“I can tell you their stores aren’t doing 50 percent increase.”
Atkinson says online shopping in Canada is far outpacing the traditional in-store experience.
In fact, Leopold Turgeon, a Quebec Retail Council representative says the only way for smaller retailers to compete with the Internet is to catch up and get on the web.
Montreal officials have plans to revamp Sainte-Catherine street to enhance the shopping experience and try to keep the foot traffic alive, but it may not happen fast enough for the struggling downtown retail industry.
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