Upside Down - Small Retailing in T.O.

The Globe and Mail recently ran a piece about the collapse of traditional retailing strips in the city (The Downside of Up, Saturday July 19th, 2008, T.O. Section). The article focused on the Danforth, Queen St West, and several other corridors where indie retailers were leaving in droves due to the high costs of rent and the soaring municipal tax burden. What the writer failed to point out was the role that the consumer plays in the viability and livability of their own neighbourhoods. Real communities are built around a variety of things. The mix includes residential dwellings, commercial enterprise, public spaces, transportation, social good will, private and public services and government. The glue that holds this all together is the responsibility that each stakeholder has to the greater good and strength of the community. Taxes pay for public services, retailers provide other goods and services, residents maintain their properties and utilize local providers, restaurants, hardware, book, toy and grocery stores. Those commercial businesses in turn employ local people, contribute to local schools, and play a role in the viability of the neighbourhood. An unwritten contract of sorts is struck between these parties and community strengthens or falls apart depending how many opt in and out of their obligations. At least that's the way it once worked.

Retailing has completely changed during our lifetimes. Giant corporate interests have undermined the traditional small local retailer, drawing away an increasingly larger percentage of consumers to vast mazes of concentrated retail conformity literally miles from where they live. These massive retail camps allow corporations to focus, control and manage how people shop by removing them from their communities and recreating the illusion of public spaces in a tightly controlled sales environment. They are designed to sell things and they work. The consequences of this shift is the focus of the Globe's article. Local retailers are left to provide coffee, lottery tickets and cigarettes and slowly die off as more and more storefronts sport either “For Lease” or “Cafe”signs. Less than 10 years ago you could buy a television on Roncesvalles Avenue, a concept that seems almost quaint now. At last count, there were nearly 30 places to get a cup of coffee though and couple more set to open. Community retail has devolved into a nickle and dime industry surviving on scraps of proximity/convenience - resident's buying a coffee on the way to the Rona. Think about it, you can't buy an iPod, a computer or a 2x4 on Roncey.

Unfortunately, this is a lost fight. It was over the better part of 15 or 20 years ago. Community retailing cannot (and will not) recover and a significant rethinking of what constitutes local commerce needs to be undertaken. The corporates have succeeded for two reasons; 1) they are better at marketing and retailing in the 21st century and 2) municipalities & citizens don't connect the viability and livability of their community with sustainable and small-scale supply of goods and services. The ramifications of these facts have not played out quite yet. A lot more “For Lease” signs are coming and traditional urban retail areas will continue to decline. Sooner or later, the City of Toronto's municipal tax burden will overwhelm even the most fortunate of the remaining indie retailers. The Film Buff's municipal tax bill for 900 sq feet in a dank basement is closing in on $13,000 per year and growing almost exponentially. Street parking rates have tripled on Roncey in 4 short years. While Canadian cities have not experienced the hollowing out of their downtown core's residential population to the extent that many American cities have, the same cannot be said about the community retail sector. That exodus has, and continues to happen. Entire blocks of small urban community retail centers now stand virtually abandoned – just drive along stretches of Dupont, Dundas, Bathhurst, St. Clair or any of a hundred other formerly vibrant strips in the city. They're gone, replaced by Home Depots, Walmarts, malls and power-centres with huge free parking lots, 5 or 10 miles away.

Next year, the TTC will replace the streetcar tracks on Roncesvalles, basically closing the street for the better part of the summer. Existing businesses will fail as a result, pushed over a financial cliff that they sit precariously close to right now. When the street is beautified and the tracks silky smooth, the first of a series of corporate stores will pop up, driving rents skyward and surviving indie retail tenants out. 5 years later, Roncey will look like Bloor West Village does now – a vapid Disneyland of corporate retail conformity and blandness. Most people won't care. The Roncesvalles BIA's annual Polish festival will be called a resounding success with 50,000 visitors partaking in a carnival of trucked-in street concessions and merriment. I wonder if anyone will notice that the independent shops are all gone. Probably not.

That's progress for you.