Business owners look to shore up beachfront’s appeal
High rent, urban sprawl and poor parking blamed for vacancies on Marine Drive
While in the summer months we have a lot of tourists, the winter months don’t bring that clientele.
A group of White Rock’s beachfront merchants met recently with local commercial organizations to come up with ways to boost business along the seaside drive amid claims of tough times.
The merchants met with the White Rock Business Improvement Association (BIA) and the South Surrey and White Rock Chamber of Commerce on Feb. 28. The slogan “The Drive is Alive” emerged from the meeting, said Ernie Klassan, White Rock BIA president and owner of Ashberry and Logan Floral Designers.
“It is not a ghost town,” Klassan told Postmedia News. “There are some issues that need to be addressed and that was really the purpose of the meeting.”
The meeting followed reports about a high number of vacancies on what used to be one of the region’s top seaside destinations. While some local stakeholders believe that elbow grease and consultation could produce remedies, commercial brokers blame the problem on the evolution of development and consumer habits in White Rock and South Surrey.
Along a central stretch of Marine Drive, three restaurants have permanently closed, two storefronts are available for rent and four shops are not open for business, The Sun reported in January.
“While in the summer months we have a lot of tourists, the winter months don’t bring that clientele,” Klassan said. “We’re hoping to bring other businesses that can help sustain the economy of Marine Drive.”
He said the beachfront lacks a grocery store, a hardware store and other services needed by residents. The biggest problem is parking, he said.
“The BIA on behalf of its membership has put forth to city hall a proposal to have free parking for the winter months on an ongoing basis,” he said. “We’re waiting for a response from council.”
Other strategies emerged from the meeting. “We’re meeting with property owners and commercial realtors this week to hear from them what kind of things they can come up with,” he said. “After that, we’ve asked for a delegation to approach council.”
Klassan said they are also planning to hold an “open house” on Marine Drive on April 1 and are asking merchants, landlords and residents to come down to help clean up the area and business fronts.
“We’re going to have a bunch of booths set up so locals can come and give input as to what they would like to see Marine Drive look like in the next five years,” he said.
White Rock Coun. Bill Lawrence attended the meeting. He owned the Sandpiper Pub on Marine Drive until it closed last year.
He said ideas are needed to keep business humming along the drive year-round. “Is there something else that might whet the appetite of a lot of our customers? Should we have a barbershop down there? Should we have a place that deals specifically in housewares and home improvement products and things like that?”
Unreasonably high rents are also to blame, he said. “It’s eating into the profitability of a lot of those businesses.”
The city plans to invest $4.5 million into Memorial Park, including new washrooms, a viewing platform and enhanced community event space. Construction will begin in the fall of this year. Another $9 million will go to a new parkade at Victoria and Vidal for up to 300 vehicles. The city also has partnered with the BIA to introduce a free trolley service along Marine Drive during the summer months. But commercial brokers say the fix could be more complicated and point to the evolution of the city’s development trends.
“I think there’s … a perfect storm of factors that seem to have come to surface that are restricting or lessening the appeal of the beach area down there,” said Mike Hodge, a vice-president of retail with Avison Young.
“There are lots of different pockets of rapidly growing (areas) in White Rock and you now have found that people have other options to choose to eat,” he said.
An example of that is the Morgan Heights area at 24th Avenue and 160th Street, he said.
“You’ve got four and now almost five shopping centres that have strong options for people to eat and those options are a lot closer to the areas that have seen the most … residential growth.”
He agreed that parking is a problem for the Drive, but the bigger problem is that people are less inclined to use their car to get there in the first place and would much rather eat and shop near their homes or along mass-transit routes.
“Maybe people still want to go to the beach if it’s a destination and a special treat, but that’s an investment of your time,” he said.
Despite having the promenade, White Rock beach is bothersome to access, he said. “It’s not that walkable. You’ve got hike down a fairly significant hill to get there and parking is terrible. You’ll do a whole bunch of laps in the summer.”
Brent Heed, a broker with Colliers International, said there is more vacancy on the Drive than in recent memory. The South Surrey resident of 14 years visited the area last week.
“I saw an asking rent at $14 per square foot and I saw a couple of other asking rents in the mid-$30s per square foot,” he said. “That seems a bit high given what’s going on.”
He agreed that it’s tough to tell which businesses are closed just for the season, but changes seem to be needed. “The beach area is almost an area that’s stuck in time,” he said. “I recall when it was just gangbusters down there and it was definitely a place to be.”
Now other multi-family and mixed-use developments in the city are pulling away traffic and restaurant customers, he said. “I’m not saying it’s anybody’s fault. It was almost as if they were left behind. There needs to be more creative development.”