An Aussie Answer for Saving Dunbar?

By Carol Volkart

With its papered-over storefronts and unhealthily high vacancy rate, Dunbar Street is the poster-child for failing retail in one of the city’s most affluent areas.

But experts say it’s just an illustration of a broader global phenomenon. Local retail has undergone a sea-change, they say, and many businesses are no longer viable. Their closures are eroding the social structure once provided by shopping streets, and now we must find new ways of coming together.

“Across North America and in markets overseas, a variety of forces are threatening the viability and vibrancy of neighbourhood retail,” says a 2020 small-business study for the city of Vancouver co-led by veteran urban planner Lewis Silberberg.  The main culprits? Competition from online retail; rising property taxes and lease rates; shifting demographics and consumer preferences; and the pressures of redevelopment.

“This is a much bigger problem than Dunbar,” says commercial realtor Don Mussenden, who contributed to the 2020 city study. “In high streets around the world, retail is suffering.”

Former senior city planner Christina DeMarco says the changes are shifting the type of businesses on local shopping streets.  “I think we do have to live with the reality that we’re not going to have the toy store and the cute kids’ clothing store in the neighbourhood anymore,” she says. “They are going to be fewer.” And the service-oriented businesses that will replace them – more dentist offices, more nail spas, and medical-related businesses – “don’t make for the most exciting streetscape.”

But she’s also caught an exciting glimpse of how neighbourhood shopping streets could be revived. Her enthusiasm bubbles up when she describes how some Australian cities have combined non-retail facilities such as libraries and community centres with retail outlets such as grocery stores and restaurants – the two complementing each other to create thriving centres in local neighbourhoods.

“They’re certainly very important places for community to happen,” she says, noting one Sydney library is so “absolutely phenomenal” that seniors move to a nearby housing development just to be close to it.

Right now, Dunbar Street’s storefront vacancy rate is the worst on the city’s west side. The city’s 2026 storefront report showed it rose to 17 percent in 2026, up from 15 percent the year before, way above the five to seven percent rate considered healthy.

Point Grey Village, its suffering sister down the hill, has a vacancy rate of 10 percent, down four percent from the previous year. But DeMarco, who lives in Point Grey, points out that’s not necessarily a sign of improvement; when storefronts are demolished, they’re just not counted anymore.

(The city’s highest vacancy rates are in Strathcona at 20 percent, Hastings Crossings at 19 percent and Chinatown at 18 percent.)

While Dunbar Street’s fortunes have ebbed and flowed over the decades, as recounted in the local history book, The Story of Dunbar, today’s retail looks very different from the commercial scene it describes at the millennium.

The bustling Dunbar Street of 2000 offered everything from kids’ toys and costumes to vacuum cleaners, books, bikes, and jewelry. Residents could walk up the street for knitting, gardening and golf supplies, and even rent power tools for home and garden maintenance. They could get their cars repaired, their bikes fixed, their furnaces tended to, their photos taken, and their vacations planned, all within a quick walk of their homes.

Online shopping has been “a crusher for local retail,” says commercial realtor Mussenden, recalling a friend who used to go from store to store to check out prices, but now can do that online. The result: whole neighbourhoods have no reason to head up to the village centre to shop.

“Category-killer” big stores have also forced out smaller ones, he says, running down his list of reasons for the changes on the retail scene. When stores like London Drugs and Shoppers carry the products that were once the mainstay of smaller ones – even groceries – the little ones can’t compete.

Then there’s shoplifting in a “catch-and-release no-consequences world” that he says has caused many closures. Lack of foot traffic because of online shopping and the other factors he’s cited also make it hard for stores to survive. Even banks are eliminating tellers, he says, further reducing the number of people in commercial areas.

“There’s got to be a reason to go shopping in a local community.”

What we’re seeing happen on Dunbar now reflects the findings of the 2020 retail study. It assessed “change over time” for the tenant mix in six local shopping areas – Marpole, Collingwood, Hastings North, West Broadway, South Granville, and Commercial Drive.

While Dunbar wasn’t one of the areas in the study, its results will seem familiar to any local shopper.

Closed stores? The study found active retail outlets down by seven percent in a decade, and vacant storefronts, including those under construction, up by 58 percent.

Fewer mom-and-pop businesses and more chain stores? The study showed independent stores down by 13 percent and chain stores up by 30.

Other findings explained why it’s more difficult to find hard goods in Dunbar, but still possible to get a coffee and buy groceries.

Those hard-goods stores, whose products such as clothing and furniture aren’t bought as frequently and are easy to compare online, were down by 30 percent. But grocery stores and businesses supplying frequently purchased, day-to-day needs, declined by only two percent.

Happy that your coffee-shop selection is still good? The 2020 study showed that in that one category – food and beverage establishments – there was actually an increase, up by 16 percent.

Loss ‘akin to losing a limb’

The decline of Dunbar Street raises the question of what happens to a community’s social structure when the traditional glue—a place to shop and socialize —is vanishing.

Ask any group of longtime Dunbar residents about their main street as it used to be, and you’ll get an outpouring of affectionate reminiscences about delightful small stores, their products and their owners.

There’s sadness too, something that doesn’t surprise UBC sociology professor Seth Abrutyn, who says shopping areas serve a fundamental need for humans to interact and check each other out.

“It provides us the opportunity to monitor the collective we belong to,” he says. It allows us to see acquaintances and strangers, interact with familiar and unfamiliar people and hear their stories. “And, when we observe a busy store or street, it makes us feel like the community is actually alive and abuzz.”

And when that’s gone?

“In research on natural or human-made disasters, survivors describe the loss of social infrastructure in ways akin to losing limbs,” Abrutyn says in an email interview. “It can strip us of both the anchors that protect against storms (in a metaphoric sense) and from the well-being generated by that buzz.”

The disappearance of a shopping area doesn’t necessarily reach the same scale or size as a disaster, he says, “but the gradual erosion is felt and eventually the loss is sensed acutely, but because it wasn’t sudden, there is a sort of ambiguity as to why we feel this feeling.

“But neighborhoods live and die by the movement of its denizens, and the loss of social infrastructure means those places that were alive in reality and in our memory slip away.”

Olinda Vriend’s memories of Dunbar Street during the nearly 40 years she ran Olindas clothing store at 4305 Dunbar reflect Abrutyn’s observations.

She recalls a busy street that some locals visited daily, bringing family members and friends from other areas of the city. Customers became friends, businesspeople supported each other, and “I felt a lot of support from churches, hospitals and community groups.” She created a garden outside her business that a friend helped maintain. For 15 years, she even shared a dog with a customer who couldn’t have a dog full-time; the dog would spend hours in Olinda’s shop window while its other owner worked.

“The community feeling was very important,” says Vriend.  “I think the local people love to have retail shops to drop by to meet friends and make new ones,” she says. “The street was thriving when I had my business. I think it makes people feel they belong and that is what community is all about.”

Analysing an ailing street

What does a professional urban planner, who over the decades has studied every storefront in the city, think of our struggling Dunbar Street? To answer that question, Lewis Silberberg takes me on a quick-paced tour of the central business area, beginning at Stong’s and down to the library block, where we cross over to London Drugs and walk back to 27^th.

En route, I learn that you can’t generalize about a shopping area; every block is different, every type of retail is different, and the reasons for its failing or flourishing are different. I also learn:

-Central Dunbar is fortunate to have three main anchor tenants – Stong’s, London Drugs and Shoppers – because anchor tenants are “critical” for a shopping area’s future health. We’re especially fortunate because Silberberg says areas with retail grocery anchors tend to do better.

-There are about 12,668 square feet of vacant space in three prominent locations, all making our area less attractive.  “These long-term vacancies affect the market’s perception of the space and the local shopping area,” he says. The sites are:

• 4355 Dunbar, the old Dunbar Produce store, vacant since 2018. (4,190 square feet)
•  4445 Dunbar, the old Vancity Credit Union site, then BMO until it moved across the street. (5,748 square feet)
•   4395 Dunbar, once a BMO office, in a character building on a corner location. (2,730 square feet)

-Casting his planner’s eye on the visual aspects of Dunbar Street, Silberberg notes that Stong’s has done a good job of breaking up its nearly block-long storefront with its indoor/outdoor café.

-Across the street, he sees Shoppers as problematic because of its long, windowless frontage and adjacent parking lot. Planners think retail streets should have contiguous storefronts; interrupting them with parking lots isn’t a good idea.

-Strata retail on the ground floor of large apartment buildings means a loss of control over tenant mix, which can lead to lifeless streets. For example, Silberberg points to an empty-looking bank office on a prime corner of Dunbar Street. Banks may be important anchors for the neighbourhood, he says, “but they don’t create active space.” He recalls shifting just such a corner bank office “at great effort” in the West End many years ago and replacing it with a Blenz outlet.

-Long blank walls of glass are a problem. “The idea is that you have multiple storefronts. If you want to activate your street, you need multiple stores, storefronts next to each other.”

-Older buildings – of which we pass many – often can’t get long-term tenants because of demolition clauses. “You can’t attract good people to come in long term and put money into it if they’re going to have their lease terminated with six months’ notice.”

-The London Drugs block does a good job of meeting Silberberg’s idea that each block should have a distinct role; in this case, it’s well-tenanted with businesses that tend to be personal or medical-related.

Making  Dunbar thrive again

Information, collaboration, flexibility and innovation are among the solutions offered up for failing local retail streets like Dunbar. The 2020 city study proposed a wide range of solutions to the problems facing local retail streets, including fairer taxes, more flexibility in zoning and business usage and simpler permitting processes.

“Saving a street is a multifaceted effort, and there should be agreement on strategy,” says Silberberg, stressing the importance of good information and collaboration among businesses, landlords, business associations and the city. “Once the work is happening, you need strong leadership and partnering. Otherwise, nothing happens.”

Retaining existing tenants is key, he says.  “Tenant retention should always take priority over tenant recruitment – you should figure out what’s happening with existing tenants first.”

On the innovation side, DeMarco hopes that the lively, people-filled spaces combining retail and non-retail uses that she saw in Australia are potential models for turning declining shopping areas into vibrant neighbourhood centres.

She recalls that one, which occupied the top floor of a 40,000-square-foot outlet of a Woolworths supermarket in Queensland, was spacious enough to allow room for many uses, including for computers, computer aid for seniors and kids, and for bridge and play groups. “You open the doors and it’s like turning the page in a story book and you see all this thriving community.”

Then there was the intriguing hole in the wall of the Wollahra library, located above the shops on a street in Sydney. Checking it out, DeMarco discovered it was the entrance to a slide, ending in a big pile of cushions, down to the children’s area of the library. “So I went down to the kids’ area and there were probably 10 moms and kids,” she says. “This was an example of recognizing this is community, this is recreation, this is education all in the same place.”

Silberberg too sees the value of bringing retail and non-retail together. “As it gets harder to recruit traditional retail businesses, non-retail anchors such as libraries, community centres, and theatres can play an increasing role in drawing traffic to local shopping areas,” he says.

Adds Mussenden: “Clustering retail around non-retail uses like community centres and schools might be one solution. The integration of cultural institutions, shopping, education and community centres is a positive thing the government could do.”

Innovation and flexibility will be key to helping save shopping areas, he says. Pointing to West London’s Portobello Road, where a Saturday street market became a major success, he adds: “Somebody has to have big ideas.”

And to help new businesses get started, he recalls Jane Jacobs’ idea that some low-cost rentals are essential to a thriving street. He notes that cheap rents in Gastown in the late 1960s sparked a burst of new businesses there. “You need the ability to develop interesting businesses.”

‘Hands-off’ approach not helpful

The city could do a lot to help retail survive and encourage vibrant commercial areas that people would enjoy being in, the planners say. They urge loosening the rules and making it easier for businesses to get upgrades and permits so they have flexibility to respond to the changing retail environment.

That hasn’t happened yet.

DeMarco recalls the painfully long, complex and expensive process involved when Point Grey residents got together to help a well-loved local pharmacist move next door after the sale of the building that had housed his pharmacy for 28 years. “It was a real ordeal. It took months and months,” she said. “There seems to be a lack of attention inside city hall about how to actually help small businesses survive.”

Nor was the city onside when the Friends of Point Grey Village, co-founded by DeMarco, fought for improved community amenities as part of the West 10^th Safeway site redevelopment.

The group wanted a bigger library, some childcare spaces and a pleasant outdoor space for people to watch the world go by.” They got nothing – not even a mid-block crossing to make it easier for shoppers to cross West 10^th.. All the developer’s contributions to the community were eaten up by the below-market housing included in the development.

DeMarco thinks the city showed a great lack of foresight in not understanding the significant role the three-acre Safeway site played in the area, and there are lessons for Dunbar in this.

“If we’re talking about how to turn a place around, No. 1 is look after your catalyst sites – large sites in strategic locations,” she says. In Dunbar, that would be the long-vacant Dunbar Produce store, which she calls a key site that needs attention.

The city’s hands-off attitude towards what happens in local shopping areas is not a good planning strategy, she says.  “To me, it’s not enough to just let the private market solve it. That’s what planning is all about – to try to steer the private market into results that benefit the community.”

Officially, the city’s position may be that neighbourhood centres are important, she says, “but there’s not that matching action, to actually create that people place, that sense of community. “

Density is another important aspect of a thriving local shopping area, with the 2020 retail study finding that fewer than 40 residents per hectare (about the size of a city block) makes it harder to support local shopping. Dunbar, like Point Grey, is under the 40 mark, compared to areas like the West End, which have more than 100 residents per hectare.

“The only way to counteract the hollowing out of neighbourhoods is to put density in,” says Mussenden.

Andy Yan, director of the City Program at Simon Fraser University, who was involved in the 2020 study, later told Business in Vancouver for a story on post-pandemic business health that raising the numbers to 40 per hectare “is not a crazy density; it’s actually remarkably pleasant, and it’s achievable because it happens incrementally. You don’t need a mass clearing of retail strips.… It’s a quiet, gradual densification around retail strips.”’

DeMarco said increased density alone won’t solve the problem. But given online shopping and the widespread use of cars to shop anywhere, “I do agree we need more people to support the same amount of retail.”

Sociologist Abrutyn says humans are adaptable and will find other places for social interactions if shops aren’t there. There’s nothing magical about the shops themselves, he says. “We can make any physical space a social space by returning over and over and participating in certain activities that become stable over time.”