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Originally Posted by someone123
I am not sure about this building. I suspect it will take some more time to get started and to be leased since it wasn't clear up until a few weeks ago that it would be able to proceed.
My sense with areas like Spring Garden Road is that there is a lot of pent-up demand for higher-quality retail spaces for chains like H&M that cannot be satisfied by the spaces that are available today. It's the same on Barrington Street. The malls like Park Lane also seem to suffer from the lack of anchor tenants and don't appear to have suitable spaces for them. If they could attract something like Target I bet it would make a big difference.
City Centre Atlantic was totally dead at one point but then it was renovated for Pete's. I'm not sure how well the upstairs part is doing but Pete's alone is a huge draw and a huge improvement over what was there. Had the owners never renovated the space, I'm sure they would have struggled to find tenants for it and many people probably would have taken that as a sign that nobody wants to shop downtown or whatever. It's very similar to the stories where a business fails and then the owner blames the customers for not buying stuff. That way of framing things doesn't actually make sense. If you're setting up a business one of the first things you need to do is understand the market. If you're a landlord trying to lease out a space, you need to figure out what the demand is. If you fail to do this it's your fault, not the fault of potential customers who aren't buying something they don't want.
There are some legitimate grievances as far as the municipality goes, but my take on the downtown is that a lot of failures are actually due to a lack of business skill and creativity. One big piece of evidence for this is that there are plenty of success stories in the area, both in terms of retailers and in terms of real estate development and heritage restoration.
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You've articulated really well, some of the systemic problems with some of the businesses in the downtown core, as well as landlords (though these problems also afflict Nova Scotia businesses/landlords elsewhere too). Small biz downtown do have a legit grievance about the advantages that big box have over them, in terms of city subsidies and unfair taxation, but they have problems too, which you've hit on the head.
I think part of it is the usual things like pessimism, negativity, and conservatism (just refusing to try something different), but also, perhaps mostly, an unwillingness to see the value in longer term returns on investment today.
The HMV space is a great example. Here is prime real estate, on a street with more foot traffic anywhere east of Montreal, that has basically sat empty for over a year, with big ugly "FOR LEASE" signs in the windows.
Whoever are the idiots who own that property, should have figured out that their price point is too high, or the space is in need of renovation to attract a higher end client. But no. It sits there, looking ugly and empt. No renovations going on. No changes planned. And the rest of us suffer with having a prime shop front vacant on a street that is otherwise improving and on the way up.
In other words, the landlords are just a bunch of cheapos, unwilling to spend a bit of money today, which if they had two clues to rub together, would mean a significant return in the long run, to land a significant anchor tenant that could re-define the street and also ensure a long time, high-rent paying tenant.
I know I've said it before elsewhere on SSP, but Halifax Shopping Center is a great example of a different mentality. The owners have truly invested in that place over the last 5+ years, making major renovations. And now, those investments are starting to pay off. They've aggressively courted big name tenants and won: Apple, Victoria Secret, H&M, Sephoria, etc.
And word is on the street, more are coming: Michael Kors, etc.\
Anyways. Yeah. someone123... you're bang on.
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