TAS
Senior Member
With The Bay closing and opening up spaces in various malls, I imagine that's the end of talk of Simons moving downtown. I'm sure Kingswal Mall would be preferred if they were to move.
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- Thread starter Daveography
- Start date
EdmTrekker
Senior Member
Avenuer
Senior Member
I could see Simon’s doing well there
David A
Senior Member
Nothing has ever come from the talk as far as I can tell, but if they wanted a third store, having a more central location while keeping the Londonderry one could still make sense.
With so many people now going back to work downtown and a huge retail gap there, it could still be a good opportunity to get a good space at a good price.
policyenthusiast
Active Member
From what I've been told, DT commercial spaces are still overpriced despite the vacancy rates. Big-box retail also survives on foot traffic rates that DT is struggling to reach.
David A
Senior Member
I do feel the city needs to do more to encourage retail businesses back to the downtown core. The ongoing depression era feel of all the empty spaces still is not good for the city or its image.
Perhaps something like a 2 or 3 year property tax holiday for empty retail spaces. Actually, it was probably something that should have been done a while ago.
SarcasticMarmot
Active Member
Or maybe commercial landlords should be doing the work. If supply and demand is to be believed then rent should be crashing in the downtown core, which it clearly isn't. Rather than use taxpayers' dollars to reward negligent landlords we should increase the tax on vacant spaces to incentivize dropping their ridiculous rental asks.
Gus Haynes
Active Member
A tax holiday for... empty spaces?? Wouldn't that just incentivize vacancies?
constance_chlore
Active Member
Isn't this something that might incentivize developers to construct fewer retail spaces? Which, I don't know, might be fine—but people on this forum seem awfully disappointed when a building is proposed in a prominent area without CRUs.
thommyjo
Senior Member
This is why some cities have played with tax increases on empty CRUs actually.
Similar to vacant land, where owners are often happy to sit on it and wait, CRUs in buildings can get the same treatment.
Although I’d argue the land one is more permissible as it’s so expensive to develop a site and poor conditions are out of a developers control. Whereas an empty CRU can basically always be filled in a city like ours for the right price. But I believe the pricing is tied to financing and evaluations for the asset, so there are incentives to keep it high, even if empty. We gotta change that incentive structure.
David A
Senior Member
I mean for vacant spaces that are filled.
David A
Senior Member
I believe compared to other cities, downtown Edmonton's rates are lower, but as for crashing there is probably a limit to how low they will go as the landlords have costs to cover as well.
The current situation has dragged on for several years and not improved greatly since COVID, so there needs to be some incentive to create some urgency perhaps for those who are still waiting for rents to crash or whatever..
Gus Haynes
Active Member
It's hard to say what (if any) policy approach is desirable here. I would love, as much as anyone, to see vacant retail spaces filled. But sometimes you end up with a Good Goods situation, where generous incentives turn out to be a complete waste of time and resources.
David A
Senior Member
Yes, while well intended I feel those particular incentives were overly generous and targeted at only a few businesses, which were parts of the problem.
So, something that wasn't upfront but spread over a few years would probably work better and if the space became vacant again of course the tax holiday incentive would end.
So, something that wasn't upfront but spread over a few years would probably work better and if the space became vacant again of course the tax holiday incentive would end.