470 replies to this topic

[G-Man]

The Flight Centre downtown has removed its signage and has indicating it is not coming back. Not really that shocking I suppose. 

[gstc84]

The Flight Centre downtown has removed its signage and has indicating it is not coming back. Not really that shocking I suppose.

The one on Broughton, I assume? There’s also the location in the Juliet. Definitely not a surprise to close at least one of them down for good.

[m3m]

The one in Vic West also closed permanently recently

[G-Man]

It was the Juliet one that I saw closed and signage removed. 

[Mike K.]

Ah, yes that’s what I saw at West Side Village. I saw people removing items and the signage had already come down. Couldn’t remember what was there.

Can we confirm the status of the Broughton Street one?

[Victoria Watcher]

hard to know their website still shows broughton and blanshard.

 

their website also says every location is closed due to covid though.  which is not a good sign when most across the country would be allowed to open now.

[Mike K.]

Yeah. Wikipedia says “Until the COVID-19 pandemic, Flight Centre operated 150 retail shops in Canada.”

[Spy Black]

I'll be at my office today, and have a look at what's going on at the Broughton/Gov't Flight Centre.

 

I'm seeing a lot of empty storefronts in and around the block or two around my office, with no notices in the window and no public announcements.

One presumes they're simply never going to be back to re-open, and didn't bother with any sort of public announcement ... not that an announcement would have made any difference, or helped them through their closing down in any way.

 

I wonder when we're going to understand the real impact of the shut-downs, especially when it sinks in that City Hall has no plan to assist downtown business, presumably because they're apparently 100% focused on housing the homeless.

Edited by Spy Black, 02 June 2020 - 07:36 AM.

[Mike K.]

Beyond telling you to run your business from the street, City Hall has no plan.

And I can’t help but think this’ll be used politically. “So, when your business needed the sidewalk, we gladly allowed you to take that space. But when people are loitering on the sidewalk, you want to call the police on them?” There’s another side to this, one can’t help but think, in as politically charged a region as ours.

[Spy Black]

I agree - with this Council everything is agenda based (regardless of the economics).

 

I think we'll see restaurants spilling out onto sidewalks, and temporary closures of main thoroughfares that quickly turn into permanent closures of those same main thoroughfares. 

All done with the agenda-based goal of getting automobiles out of downtown for good, but with the false optics that City Hall is "helping" downtown business recover from COVID.

 

I may be mistaken, but have we heard anything at all in terms of substantial, solid economic policy changes at City Hall to aid in the financial recovery of downtown businesses?

 

Save a few focused street corners like View and Government, where a bunch of just re-opened restaurants have created the false optic of a once again vibrant downtown, I'm finding that most of downtown Victoria is still pretty much a ghost town during the day and the evening, and I wonder just how long the street level, service based businesses can survive post-isolation without any customers visiting downtown, and thus without any customers visiting their storefront?

 

The outlying Canadian Tire, Home Depot and Walmarts will all be fine, but the downtown core lacks any of those Big Box type stores (except perhaps The Bay). 

I don't get a good vibe at all (walking around downtown looking for a sandwich at lunch) about the short and long term viability of many of these relatively small storefront businesses that, even in a good year likely don't make their owners "rich" - but rather just offer those owners a somewhat solid middle class existence in an otherwise expensive part of the Province to live in.

[spanky123]

Beyond telling you to run your business from the street, City Hall has no plan.

 

They have a plan, it is just not what they are telling us. Instead of reducing expenses to match declining revenues like pretty much EVERY OTHER City in the country, our City has hired 25 people since February, raided reserves and spent millions funding their own pet projects. The Province has said that they can run a deficit THIS YEAR but what about next? At some point the $22M+ they pinched needs to be repaid and guess who is going to be stuck with the bulk of that tax hike? Welcome back struggling business, here is a nice little 20%+ tax present from your pals at City Hall. 

 

Unlike residential tax increases which tenants are obfuscated from by rent controls, the full cost of commercial tax increases are passed on to commercial tenants in most cases through operating costs. 

Edited by spanky123, 02 June 2020 - 08:16 AM.

[A Girl is No one]

Heard about the announcement today? City sold Apex site to Telus. Anyone know if that was a good deal and potential impacts to downtown?

[spanky123]

Heard about the announcement today? City sold Apex site to Telus. Anyone know if that was a good deal and potential impacts to downtown?

 

Telus already has building in Victoria so they are consolidating their staff into the one location. Good for the City that it will get taxes from an underutilized location but hard to tell the economics of the deal until we know exactly how much the City is getting and how much they committed to redeveloping Crystal Gardens.

 

Would be interesting to know why the Jawls walked away though.

[GetLisaSomeHelps]

Heard about the announcement today? City sold Apex site to Telus. Anyone know if that was a good deal and potential impacts to downtown?

 

Not sure on the good deal part, but I always see adding a regional HQ of an employer like Telus to a City as a positive as it generally brings stable jobs, adds significant $ to the commercial tax base, etc.

[GetLisaSomeHelps]

Definately will liven up that area a bit as it's not going to be a space for just Telus. We need more buildings like this among all the new condo buildings popping up.

[GetLisaSomeHelps]

One bonus for Telus - no need to pay to put in a ping pong table in the staff room!

[spanky123]

Not sure on the good deal part, but I always see adding a regional HQ of an employer like Telus to a City as a positive as it generally brings stable jobs, adds significant $ to the commercial tax base, etc.

 

The jobs are already here, Telus is consolidating several smaller offices they already have in Victoria.

[Victoria Watcher]

They should unload that quadra McKenzie property.

[Spy Black]

They should unload that quadra McKenzie property.

Besides being their main maintenance yard in Victoria, I'm pretty sure the low building at the front with the massive HVAC unit on the roof is one of the main switching facilities in town. Buildings don't have that kind of "junk" on the roof unless they're creating a ton of heat.

 

When I was much younger, that building was the nice, cushy, new space for the B.C. Tel Operators, and their parking lot was always full.

Now that parking lot rarely has more than 3 or 4 cars in it - despite having parking spaces for 100 ... and it could probably be sold and developed with retail or something similar ... although I suspect that Telus isn't too quick to divest themselves of their property assets ... as they have no real reason to do so.

Edited by Spy Black, 02 June 2020 - 04:07 PM.

[Victoria Watcher]

do the operators take the bus to work now?