Business has picked up overall since the REV express bike path transformed the Plateau thoroughfare, yet many merchants are still struggling.
Five years ago Montreal’s iconic Rue St-Denis was widely diagnosed as being on life support, and the prognosis was grim.
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.
“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.
“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.
“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.”
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.
“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.”
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.
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.
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.”