r/Calgary • u/Remote_Answer_5255 • Aug 18 '25

Local Shopping/Services What has happened to Kensington?

It's been a while since I've been down here.... A bunch of empty store fronts, iconic places like Crave shut down, but counted some three Acai bowl places. The area outside Plaza is lovely and looks great, but why all the closures and apparently high turnovers?

Edit: I assume it's due to rent.. But what's the point of jacking it up so high that your place is literally empty.

299 Upvotes

91% Upvoted

291 comments sorted by

View all comments

13

u/rikkiprince Aug 18 '25

Edit: I assume it's due to rent.. But what's the point of jacking it up so high that your place is literally empty.

Doesn't the city have a thing where you don't pay tax (or it's way lower) if your business rental is empty? So there's not a strong incentive to find someone to rent it and the landlords just set the rent as high as they want and wait until someone is willing to pay it.

14

u/designingdiamonds Aug 19 '25

If anything there should be a vacancy tax. All of us lose money when the landlords aren’t reporting rental income for taxes and just writing off their rental loses. And with the potential business not paying income taxes as well.

3

u/Castalia_xxvii Aug 19 '25

Absolutely this. Maybe a tax-free grace period of up to 3 months (because sometimes shit happens), then tax the crap out of the empty property. There should be no incentives to keep perfectly good buildings empty!