Article content Five years ago Montreal’s iconic Rue St-Denis was widely diagnosed as being on life support, and the prognosis was grim. “I think this street is dead,” Lily Mlabenovich said at the time . The street’s slow demise was driving shoppers and entrepreneurs away, the owner of Café Mimi delicatessen said.
Years of road construction, rising rents and the growth of online shopping contributed to a vacancy rate that saw one in four storefronts and restaurants boarded up, defacing the street’s ornate grey-stone facade with a series of grafitti-strewn gaps, like decaying teeth in a once-bright smile. High-end boutiques and kitchenware shops that had lured shoppers for decades abandoned ship as customers opted for mega-malls with plentiful free parking. And then there was COVID.
The ensuing years have seen a partial rehabilitation, spurred in part by the installation of the REV express bike lanes in 2020 that brought 1.5 million cyclists streaming by in 2023 and reduced car traffic. The number of merchants on the shopping stretch is at a 10-year high.
But many feel the changes have failed to create a winning formula for the one-kilometre stretch of storefronts and restaurants north of Sherbrooke St. once considered among Montreal’s signature shopping attractions. Much more needs to be done, they say.
But resuscitating an ailing commercial thoroughfare is not a simple operation. “The greatest scourge for retailers is online shopping. You can no longer just open any kind of shop on St-Denis St.
and expect to be successful,” says Julien Vaillancourt Laliberté, general director of the Rue St-Denis merchants’ association. Photo by Pierre Obendrauf / Montreal Gazette “For us, the period of post-REV has been like a blast of sunshine,” said Laurent St-Cyr, the owner of the cycling-themed Club Café since 2017. “The street has a much calmer ambience, with less lanes of traffic, less visual pollution and noise pollution and cleaner air, that gave us a huge boost.
” St-Cyr says his revenues have doubled since the REV opened. His café serves as a meeting hub and lunch spot for cycling groups and tourists on group bike tours. A Plateau—Mont-Royal borough bylaw restricting short-term rentals like Airbnb to limited stretches of St-Denis St.
and St-Laurent Blvd. , concentrating a clientele of tourists eager to shop, eat and spend, also made an impact. “These are the people who consume, so it’s created an interesting ecosystem,” he said.
“It brought things down to a more human scale, so you feel more like you’re in a village.” The street could use a greater mixity to entice local residents, he says — more boulangeries and pâtisseries, fewer Mexican taco restaurants and tattoo parlours. Adding to the challenge is the growing level of rivalry in the retail market.
“It’s crazy how you have to push now online, every day, and on social media,” he said. “You have to be really ‘out there,’ because there’s so much competition. In Montreal, there are good stores everywhere.
” His good fortunes spurred him to open a high-end boutique featuring cycling gear next door to his café. Just up the street, however, Mlabenovich said the changes have done nothing to attract new customers to her old-school shop packed with cured meats and Baltic sweets. She’s surviving because she offers a distinct niche clients can’t find elsewhere.
“Still is dead,” she said during a recent visit. “If you have your own customers, you’re okay. If you depend on the street and the traffic, is disaster.
“Because the worst thing here is the traffic and the parking.” Next door at the Teochew Foodie, owner Chanel Dai said the restaurant she opened three years ago is struggling despite the fact she’s tried everything: extensive renovations guided by a designer; installing a terrasse and a large ad banner; constant marketing on social media; a loyalty membership program for repeat clients. Meanwhile, popular pedestrian-only commercial streets like Mont-Royal and Duluth Aves.
siphon clients, she said. “A customer told me it used to be like the Champs-Élysées here. But we haven’t managed to accumulate the number of clients to support the business,” she said.
Their wholesale production of homemade wontons and chili sauces sold in stores across Montreal is what’s keeping them afloat. It doesn’t help that rents on similar-sized businesses are going for $6,000 a month, she said, with much of that amount caused by high city taxes. Or when clients tell her they drove 20 minutes to get to her, only to leave because they couldn’t find parking.
One bright spot was the Montreal Comic Arts Festival that runs in May and closes St-Denis St. to traffic for three days. The last edition lured 95,000 to the street.
“There were so many people, that really helped. We sold a lot, people learned we exist,” Dai said. “But one festival a year isn’t enough.
” She’s contemplating moving her wholesale operations to the South Shore. At the Brûlerie St. Denis that’s been roasting and grinding coffee beans for 39 years, director of operations Line Guérin said revenues have remained static for the last five years.
“The road looks better, but it’s still quiet. We need pharmacies and small grocery stores and a post office and cheese stores,” she said. “Without that we’ll never get the human traffic we need.
“We’re missing the whipped cream on the top of the sundae.” The REV express bike path “has totally changed the dynamic of the neighbourhood,” says Julien Vaillancourt Laliberté, general director of the Rue St-Denis merchants’ association. Photo by Pierre Obendrauf / Montreal Gazette It’s natural for commercial arteries to go through cyclical ups and downs, said Avi Friedman, an urban planning expert with McGill University’s school of architecture.
A street like St-Denis will always be successful, he said, because it has the fundamentals: a densely populated location, appealing architecture, good public transit access, tourists and a walkable street design on a human scale. “The popularity of the Plateau and the recognition that it’s one of North America’s nicest neighbourhoods is a big plus to St-Denis,” Friedman said. He predicts Montreal’s retail scene is about to be “shaken up” because of commercial trends on the horizon, including the new Royalmount mall , and the sudden resurgence of streets like Wellington and Notre-Dame Sts.
— commercial arteries with strong business development associations steering growth. “When you open many venues at the same time, one of them is going to decline,” he said. Along with successful festivals, “the name of the game is to be creative.
” “I walked along Mont-Royal Ave. several times this summer. It was packed with people.
In order to compete with Mont-Royal, St-Denis merchants are going to need to be way more innovative.” “For us, the period of post-REV has been like a blast of sunshine,” said Laurent St-Cyr, the owner of the cycling-themed Club Café since 2017. Photo by Pierre Obendrauf / Montreal Gazette St-Denis St.
has seen a resurgence, said Julien Vaillancourt Laliberté, general director of the Rue St-Denis merchants’ association. The vacancy rate that hovered at 24 per cent in 2020 is at 14 per cent today. The number of merchant members has risen to 310, compared to 270 a decade ago.
In Montreal, the vacancy rate for storefronts was 13 per cent in late 2023. On Mont-Royal Ave. it was 5.
6 per cent. Vaillancourt Laliberté credits a city-funded $1.2-million, four-year revitalization project that updated infrastructure and improved marketing of the street, and the REV, which “has totally changed the dynamic of the neighbourhood.
” Contrary to popular belief, he says there is parking, thanks to two large public lots, and the availability of one-day permits for $14 allowing parking in resident-only zones. The association hopes to close the street for festivals two times per summer, but organizers note security and management costs are very high. Another sign of light: St-Denis has become a hub for vintage thrift stores popular with younger shoppers, with half a dozen opening recently.
(A barista tells me he spent $150 on a used jacket. “It was a little crazy. But it’s tweed.
It’s beautiful.”) Opinions on the benefits of the REV differ. Merchants like Mlabenovich say it has made little difference.
(“Cyclists don’t stop. They have their mission and they go.”) But Vaillancourt Laliberté said studies have shown even though cyclists buy less on each visit, they have a tendency to stop and shop more often than drivers, purchasing more over the long run.
New bike stores and bike repair shops have also sprung up, anticipating business, he noted. La Beignerie doughnut shop, started by Catherine Boucher three years ago, is an example of a success story. Photo by Pierre Obendrauf / Montreal Gazette Despite best efforts, some niche products just don’t find traction, Vaillancourt Laliberté said.
He concedes the street could use a better mix of merchants, but high rents are difficult for food vendors with low profit margins. Nine per cent of vacant storefronts are owned by landlords who refuse to rent them, due to real estate speculation. It’s a complex issue Montreal is trying to solve, but it’s hampered by provincial regulations under the Cities and Towns Act, he said.
And the retail environment has become increasingly cutthroat. “The greatest scourge for retailers is online shopping. You can no longer just open any kind of shop on St-Denis St.
and expect to be successful,” he said. “Now you have to create a unique, personalized experience that can compete with doing two clicks on a screen.” La Beignerie doughnut shop, started by Catherine Boucher three years ago after she noticed doughnuts she was making in her home kitchen were selling well, is an example.
Her artisanal, vegan, sinfully heavy treats have proven so popular she was able to branch out to selling ice cream as well, with aid from the merchants association that helped her get funding. Guérin of the Brûlerie St. Denis wishes more could be done by the association and the city to give other retailers financial incentives to set up shop.
“There are really large economic problems everywhere in Montreal for different, complex reasons,” she said. “St-Denis St. has gone to seed for years.
I have hope it will eventually heal, but it won’t be tomorrow. “It’s going to need a good doctor.” rbruemmer@postmedia.
com.
