More than 50 West End shops lost since COVID: report

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This article was published 10/11/2021 (1655 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Recent research compiled by the West End Business Improvement Zone shows how much of an impact the pandemic had on the Winnipeg neighbourhood just west of downtown, and it’s likely a microcosm of the impact that could be extrapolated across the rest of the country.

The West End BIZ has been compiling data — collected by its own staff and BIZ “ambassadors” — on new businesses and business closures since 2015.

Its most recent report shows that almost all the gains the neighbourhood made between 2015 and 2019 have been effectively wiped out by the pandemic.

Its records show there at least 57 fewer businesses now in the BIZ —from Strathcona Street on the west, Notre Dame Boulevard to the north, Portage Avenue to the south converging into a pie shaped angle downtown.

In 2015 the data collection exercise counted 855 businesses and the number increased to 922 at the beginning of the pandemic. The latest tally in the summer totalled 864.

Joe Kornelson said those numbers are skewed by an inordinately large number of restaurant openings in 2020 that were already in the process of getting underway before the pandemic hit.

“On a neighbourhood level we were seeing economic concentration between 2015 and 2019,” he said. “Obviously that all went into reverse with the pandemic.”

But he said an argument can still be made that there is opportunity and optimism in the neighbourhood, evidenced by the $100 million invested in residential and commercial property in the neighbourhood over the last five years.

As well, the BIZ provides modest $1,000 grants for business improvements and over the last two years there was more than $500,000 invested in those businesses.

“To see that amount of additional private sector investment gives us a lot of confidence that people continue to believe there is potential in the neighbourhood,” he said.

While the area does not boast any dense commercial development, lease rates are affordable and even with all the business closures commercial vacancy rates have only increased slightly from 3.2 per cent in the first quarter of 2020 to 4.3 per cent in the third quarter of 2021.

That sort of stability is underpinned by the large institutional presence of the Health Sciences Centre and the University of Winnipeg campuses located in the West End.

Increased multi-family residential projects in the area also provide a source of optimism for the region with a population of about 36,000 and growing.

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca