It has been a difficult year for merchants on Bishop Street, where an ongoing construction project to build a ventilation station for the Guy-Concordia métro stop has cut off the sidewalk and blocked many establishments’ facades from view. Many business owners, like Mike Cloghesy of Mesa14 restaurant, say that their revenue has taken so much of a hit that they’re not sure they can survive until the work finally finishes sometime in 2020.
Cloghesy and several other businesses on the street have taken the city to court over the matter, citing a lack of consultation — they were given two months’ notice that the project would be impacting them before work began last year — and a lack of any assistance in the face of a big hit to their profit margins.
It was against this backdrop that Projet Montréal’s candidate for the Mayoralty, Valérie Plante, reiterated her party’s commitment to providing financial assistance to small businesses in the form of a tax break.
“The question I want to raise today is this: if the past administration was able to invest $24 million into Formula-E, saying that it would be good for businesses, how come we cannot find money to support our small businesses, here downtown and also elsewhere in the city?” Plante posited while speaking with reporters.
Both incumbent Mayor Denis Coderre and Plante, his chief opponent in next month’s election, now agree that merchants like Cloghesy who are impacted by construction projects should receive a tax break of some kind. But the Projet Montréal leader says that Coderre is very late to the party. “We have been asking for a tax break since 2015,” she said.
Plante also said that a tax break alone isn’t enough to help merchants with the difficulties they face when a major construction project comes to their street. She emphasized a need to improve co-ordination and consultation with businesses in these situations, suggesting that the two-month notice given to Bishop Street merchants wasn’t enough.