Locally owned B.C. businesses struggling to compete with large corporations say educating customers about the benefits of supporting a local economy is key to their success – but they also want government help.
“The lack of support from levels of government for smaller business [can be a challenge],” Mickey McLeod, owner of Salt Spring Coffee, told Business in Vancouver.
McLeod wants the provincial government’s recently implemented buy-local program for food producers extended to other products. Buy-local provides $2 million in funding to local food producers to market their products to B.C. consumers. Local greenhouse growers say the program has helped them capture local market share (see “B.C. greenhouse growers benefiting from ‘buy local’ push” – BIV issue 1273; March 25–31).
But local business advocates say Vancouver is a particularly challenging place to operate – and they blame city hall. Residents, it appears, aren’t the only ones fearing the downside of density.
“With densification comes increase in property value and higher retail rents and different floor spaces that are more geared toward corporate chains than small businesses,” said Amy Robinson, executive director of Loco BC.
Loco BC advocates for local ownership. It argues that locally owned businesses recirculate more money back into the local economy, pay their workers more and contribute more taxes to municipal and provincial governments than their large chain or big box counterparts.
Janna Sylvest also believes that the City of Vancouver’s densification push, combined with little attention to the needs of small business, is hobbling business owners who want to expand their enterprises beyond five employees.
The co-owner of Womyns’ Ware on Commercial Drive is alarmed at the replacement of older building stock, which often includes larger retail spaces with basement areas for storing inventory. Sylvest said that kind of space isn’t availabile in the now-ubiquitous Vancouver condo with street-level retail.
“A [global] business that’s across the street from Womyn’s Ware, they don’t have their head office anywhere near Vancouver,” Sylvest said. “They’re dictating what’s going on out of a [light industrial] zone in Burnaby, and the City of Burnaby has attracted all of these head offices by changing their zoning to that type to facilitate staff break rooms and offices.”
A dearth of larger spaces with space to store inventory, along with restrictions on how much space can be used for non-retail display purposes, means businesses that want to expand often have to fragment into several locations, Sylvest said. Since Womyns’ Ware includes a catalogue and online ordering as well as a bricks-and-mortar shop, she’s had to rent a second office at a different location.
Sylvest noted that many retail leases along corridors like Broadway now come with demolition clauses – and small-business owners are signing them in a city where it’s difficult to find space. The Rumpus Room, a popular restaurant on Main Street, is one recent example of a business that was evicted and had to close because of site redevelopment plans.
Vancouver city councillor Andrea Reimer acknowledged that the city needs to do a better job of supporting local businesses. She said recent community plans have incorporated a local economy section, but even those have been “a little thin.” Reimer added that the city might soon have to add an economic development planner to its planning department – something it’s never had before.
Creating a “small-business concierge” position to help business owners navigate city hall, something that other cities have tried, might also be a solution.
A small-business task force, housed with the Vancouver Economic Commission, is studying the issue and will release a report later this year.
“The solution I’ve heard batted around is that you don’t just have a commercial class, you have a small-business class and a not-small-business class,” Reimer said.
“Then you also need to look at who owns that business.”
