Business Optimism Seen for Vancouver’s Gastown Despite Starbucks Closure, Homelessness Issue

The former location of the Starbucks in Gastown, Vancouver, pictured on Jan. 7, 2023, is put up for lease after its closure on Dec. 31, 2022. Jeff Sandes/The Epoch Times

VANCOUVER—The closure of a popular Starbucks in Vancouver on New Year’s Eve is another setback in the challenges the city’s Downtown Eastside is facing because of poverty, homelessness, and addiction. Beside the famous steam clock in historic Gastown, the coffee shop at 199 Water Street had operated for 28 years. And while critics blame the growth of the homeless population from nearby West Hastings Street, others feel more optimistic and see some changes on the horizon.

Zofia Kwiecien lives in the neighbourhood and operates a hair salon there. Last September, she saw a woman remove her clothes, lie down at the Starbucks entrance, and start screaming at the top of her lungs.

Confused, well-meaning bystanders tried to help without success. Kwiecien flagged down a passing police cruiser, but she said the police only assessed the woman from inside the car and then drove away without addressing the situation.

Episodes like this are common in Gastown, Kwiecien said, and particularly for the Starbucks—which she believes is why the store closed.

“I guarantee you that’s what it is,” Kwiecien told The Epoch Times. “That particular part of Water Street is just heavy with the junkies bugging all the tourists and bugging everybody, because it’s busy, right?” she said.

“I just saw somebody smoking crack in broad daylight. They’re still here. They’re still everywhere,” she added.

Starbucks Canada’s communications manager, Leanna Rizzi said in an email to The Epoch Times that the closure was a decision based on the company’s regular assessment of market and other conditions with their stores.

“As a standard practice, we continually evaluate our store portfolio to ensure it’s meeting the needs of our partners (employees), customers and the communities we serve. After careful consideration, we decided to close the Starbucks Gastown store in Vancouver and our last day of operation was December 31, 2022,” she wrote.

Rizzi didn’t respond when asked what needs the company was unable to meet. She said all staff were offered positions at other Starbucks stores if they wished to remain with the company.

‘The Recovery Has Been Solid’

Corbel Commercial Real Estate Services has one of the biggest footprints in downtown Vancouver, including leasing the space formerly occupied by the Starbucks Gastown store. And while principal broker Marc Saul said several businesses have left Gastown in the past two years, he and his Corbel colleagues hadn’t expected Starbucks to be among them.

A man and woman take a selfie as steam rises from the Gastown steam clock in a quiet downtown Vancouver on April 19, 2020. The Canadian Press/Darryl Dyck

“That one caught us by surprise,” Saul said in an interview. “As far as I know, it was consistently one of the top revenue-producing Starbucks in the Lower Mainland. So it was surprising that they decided to give that one up. I really think there might have been some other corporate kind of reasons behind it.”

“Nonetheless,” he said, “we have had a remarkable amount of inquiries on it already so I think we’ll be able to get [another] good tenant in there.”

Saul admitted that COVID-19 restrictions negatively impacted businesses and led to many retail spaces coming on the market. But he said attaching to Gastown the stigma of the Downtown Eastside’s homelessness and addiction issues isn’t a fair representation of the neighbourhood, particularly because of how well it has bounced back.

“There was a point in time where there was quite a few retail spaces that came up, but we were actually able to fill them up and actually filled them up at pre-pandemic rental rates as well,“ he said. ”So overall, the recovery has been solid.”

‘Where’s Starbucks?’

Another local, Alex Mountain, shared Kwiecien’s sentiment that Starbucks had too much to deal with from the homeless and addicted population and was unable to provide a safe environment for its staff and customers. The situation is compounded by the many drug dealers in the area, she said. Yet people are still surprised the popular coffee shop is no longer running at that location.

“Too many people were doing needles in the bathroom, then nodding out and harassing the customers,” Mountain said in an interview. But she noted that the previous day, “over 10 people said, ‘Where’s Starbucks? It used to be down there,’” and she had to tell them “Yeah, they shut down.”

Other longtime businesses in the area are not changing course and are actually planning for the future.

Neils Bendtsen has run furniture retailer Inform Interiors in Gastown since 1970. He says this past year has been the worst he’s ever seen from people dealing with addictions and mental health.

“You just have to walk down an alley there and see how decrepit it is,” Bendtsen told The Epoch Times.

Still, despite the challenges overcoming the recent COVID years, Inform is expanding and Bendtsen thinks Gastown has a promising future.

“We are trying to keep the Downtown Eastside out of here, and that’s a big, big problem, of course,” Bendtsen said. “It’s going to take many years to get there, but I think it’s on that projection. I think everybody’s in agreement we can’t have it down here anymore.”

Some have seen the change in mayor and city council as part of a rejection of old policies that favoured the status quo.

The Epoch Times reached out to Vancouver City Hall for comment but did not receive a reply by publication time.