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Pique n' Your Interest

Squeezing the canary

As I watched the former employees of Bestsellers strip the shelves and fixtures from the small Village Stroll store on Sunday, I wondered if I was seeing the end of an era for one Whistler business, or the beginning of the end of Whistler as we know it.

I interviewed Bestsellers owner Garth Riess in December when I heard a rumour that the store was closing shop after 10 years.

According to Riess his landlord was raising the rent, and the business could no longer afford to operate. In fact, Riess said the business really stopped turning a profit the last time his rent was increased a few years earlier.

I’ve spent a lot of time in Bestsellers over the years shopping for CDs and browsing the bookshelves. The employees were always friendly and helpful, creating a rare, attitude-free atmosphere for customers. It seemed like they knew every band on the planet, and when their next CD was being released.

They were, in a word, cool. A small television screen in the corner showed the latest ski and snowboard movies, while staff members played DJ. I can think of three times in recent memory where I’ve asked staff members what they were playing, and went on to buy the CD for myself.

I’ve even bought CDs without even listening to them on the say-so of Bestsellers staff – in all the years I’ve frequented that store they’ve never steered me wrong.

And in my five and a half years in Whistler, I’ve completed seven of Bestsellers customer loyalty cards, and still have five other partially completed cards in my wallet. I can attest to the fact that the store was never empty when I was there, and in fact seemed to do a booming business.

The prices were slightly higher than in the city, but when you factor in the discount you get from the customer loyalty cards and the cost of a trip to Vancouver, I’ve never felt like I was getting ripped off.

Besides, as a small shop Bestsellers just couldn’t get the same volume discount as the mega stores. Riess told me in confidence how much the store pays for each CD and book, so trust me when I say his margins were pretty thin. The only reason he survived in Whistler as long as he did was volume, an advantage that would have been wiped out by another rent increase.

Now that Whistler’s only music store – an independent shop that provided an excellent service to both locals and visitors – is gone, I can only wonder who will be next.

You can argue that with such small margins to start with, the Bestsellers business model was doomed to fail in Whistler. Music stores in general are probably an endangered species anyway with the success of online services like iTunes.

You can argue that commercial landlords are only charging what the market can bear, and that there is a long line of businesses waiting to take Bestsellers’ place – one store closing does not a crisis make.

You can also argue that it’s not the rent, it’s the current business climate in Whistler – rents were not an issue when the resort was seeing record growth, and only became a problem now that business is down, or has levelled off (depending who you talk to).

But let’s be honest. We’re not going to see half of our commercial tenants put up "Going Out of Business" signs overnight. It’s going to happen gradually. And with the Olympics coming and every major chain looking to set up shop here – even if it means running at a loss – I doubt we’ll even see that many empty storefronts.

I do know that the issue of rising commercial rents is on the radar screen. The Chamber of Commerce and Tourism Whistler are looking into the issue, and our councillors have voiced concerns.

Meanwhile, the London Drugs rumour won’t go away, and many believe it’s only a matter of time before the town is embroiled in a debate over big box retailers.

Which means that the whole issue of retailers in Whistler, rising rents and the endangered independent operator, is about to hit the fan. With municipal elections coming up this fall, I wouldn’t be surprised to see commercial rents become a major campaign issue.

One of the solutions I’ve heard suggested is to build a local’s shopping area where rent is lower and shop owners have the option of buying their space. This kind of approach has been tried successfully in Vail and Aspen.

Another solution would be to try and get landlords and tenants to agree to a more open leasing process that would create competition between owners. These days most lease details are secret, and the small print can differ drastically from shop to shop.

How would we get the landlords to agree to this? It’s simple – Whistler council could impose a moratorium on approving new business licenses. When a business closes shop, it would be far more difficult to find a tenant if new licenses were not being offered. I think most landlords would negotiate before they’d let their buildings sit empty for any length of time.

Another good solution would be to lobby for provincial laws similar to the Residential Tenancy Act for commercial renters, which would effectively limit rent increases while creating a framework of regulations for both sides of the issue to follow.

All good solutions, and all long overdue.

Commercial landlords have a saying: "You’ve got to squeeze the canary, but not so hard the canary stops singing."

I can’t think of a more fitting expression for the fate of Whistler’s only music store.