A clothing boutique on Columbia Street is closing – and its owner is blaming the city.
Anita Dunn, owner of Mila + Paige, took to Instagram on Monday night to announce she will be closing her shop.
In her nine-minute video, Dunn cited concerns about the city’s increased parking rates and approval of a homeless shelter in the downtown. She said public drug use on the streets has scared away some customers.
“The city is sending a message to everyone visiting to get in and get out. So how is this ever going to be a tourist destination? It's not,” she said in her video. “So I'm angry. I'm really angry at the city.”
When she opened her store in 2016, Dunn said she felt downtown New Westminster had the potential to be a tourist destination for Lower Mainlanders, but she now feels that is “never” going to happen. She said thefts have “gone through the roof” since a shelter opened up the street from her shop.
“I've had people come in to the store completely covered in feces. There is someone smoking crack on the bench out in front of the store every single day, all day long. I've had staff quit because they're afraid to work here,” she said in her video. “I could go on and on about how that shelter has negatively impacted my business.”
Dunn said Metro Vancouver’s two-year-long sewer upgrade project on Columbia Street negatively impacted businesses, but most of her comments were directed at the state of homelessness in the downtown and parking rates.
Dunn, who worked as an accountant before opening Mila + Paige, provided statistics about parking rates and the number of unhoused people in New West, comparing those figures to what’s happening in some neighbouring cities. She said “the city loves to roll their eyes” when businesses bring up the issue of parking prices, but she’s adamant that the local rates discourage shoppers from staying.
Dunn opened Mila + Paige at 45 Sixth St. in June 2016 and relocated to its current space at 665 Columbia St. in the summer of 2018.
In March 2023, Dunn opened a second Mila + Paige location on Main Street in Vancouver. She closed that shop in February 2024.
In an interview with the Record on Friday, Dunn said she’s been debating since the fall of 2022 on whether to close the New West shop.
Dunn said there’s “definitely a tons of factors” contributing to the state of her business, but the issues in the downtown are at the top of that list. She said she’s heard from many businesses who appreciated her video.
“There was an overwhelming response of people thanking me for saying what I did,” she said.
Dunn said she opened Mila + Paige at a time when people were saying “New West was going to be the next Brooklyn” and “the Front Street Mews was going to be like Yale town.”
“There was this real vibe about the city. People were proud to be here. There were so many people downtown, walking around, going to the cafes and the restaurants,” she said. “And obviously COVID killed all of that, but it's never gone back to what we all hoped it was going to be.”
The Record has contacted the Downtown New Westminster Business Improvement Association for comment.
While many community members have expressed disappointed that Mila + Paige will be closing, some expressed concern that Dunn directed much of the blame for her decision to close on a homeless shelter. Some noted that businesses are facing a wide range of issues, including inflation.
Taking action
Mayor Patrick Johnstone said he talks to downtown business owners frequently and hears their concerns about a range of issues, including the post-COVID “hangover” and deadlines for repaying Canada Emergency Business Account (CEBA) loans.
“Just with the economic uncertainty right now, people are not spending money on luxuries in these kinds of times,” he said. “A lot of businesses are just kind of hanging on right now; I hear that.”
Johnstone encourages community members, when they’re able, to step up and support the local businesses that they love.
“That’s really the way to keep them serving our community,” he said. “It's heartbreaking when a business closes. You know that that's a person losing something that they put their heart and their energy into for a long time. It's a tough go for businesses right now.”
The city, said Johnstone, responds by listening to businesses’ concerns and proving as many resources as it can to address those issues.
When attending the Downtown BIA’s annual general meeting on Wednesday night, Johnstone said he heard from business owners who told him they’ve started to see some positive changes in the downtown because of the enhanced work being done by the city’s integrated services and engineering departments.
“Businesses were saying to me, things are cleaner,” he said.
Johnstone is confident more positive changes will come as the city rolls out its pilot project to deal with the three overlapping crises of homelessness, addiction and mental health. He said the city is committing an additional $2 million to address services in the downtown.
“I think it will be a visible difference when we do bring that out,” he said of the pilot program that should get underway in April.
Although Johnstone expects to see “a turnaround” in the downtown once the crises response teams are fully implemented downtown, he said the ultimate solution is housing, shelter and wrap-around supports – something the city is working with the provincial government to bring to New Westminster. He said cities across the region and North America are seeing the impacts of the homelessness, mental health and addiction crises.
“We feel them in New Westminster because we are a dense urban city. So our experience of them is different than the experience of people in Coquitlam or in Delta. That's part of the result of being a dense urban city,” he said. “But this is something that's not just being felt in British Columbia, it's being felt across North America.”
But that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be addressed at a local level, Johnstone said.
“We need to show up with the resources,” he said. “I'm not interested in just pointing at other levels of government and saying: ‘You need to do the work.’ We also need to do the work, and I'm proud that we are. I'm proud that the majority of my council supports us in getting the work done and putting resources on the ground here in New Westminster.”
As for parking rates, Johnstone said that’s a conversation the city is continuing to have with the downtown.
“It’s a difficult challenge,” he said. “It's not as simple as just cut the price on parking, and that will solve the problem. It will actually exacerbate the problem.”
Council critics
Not all members of New Westminster city council, however, feel the city is doing enough to address the concerns of downtown businesses.
In a statement to the Record, New Westminster Progressive councillors Daniel Fontaine and Paul Minhas said they have presented motions that would support the city’s small business community, but they have been voted down by Community First members of city council. That includes motions to lower parking rates, reduce electricity bills, and create a new crime and safety committee.
"Our elected leaders need to apply a heavier dose of common sense in the decision-making process,” said their statement. “We should also commit to doing all we can to support our existing and future coffee shops, restaurants and other merchants who are critical to the future success of our retail strategy."
The New Westminster Progressive councillors also said the city needs to make sure the New West police department is “well resourced” so its members can find every opportunity to walk and cycle on downtown streets while working to ensure residents, business owners and tourists feel safe.
"We firmly believe in a four-pillar approach to dealing with the many social and public disorder challenges plaguing our downtown that are getting worse by the day,” said the New Westminster Progressives. “That means not simply supporting supervised drug injection sites, but also ensuring we advocate loudly to Victoria for the desperately needed mental health and drug treatment services that we sorely lack in our region.”
(Along with Johnstone, councillors Ruby Campbell, Tasha Henderson and Jaimie McEvoy belong to Community First New West. Coun. Nadine Nakagawa was a member during the last civic election, but did not renew her membership at its AGM.)
Johnstone said the two New Westminster Progressive councillors voted against council’s decision to fund the three crises response team pilot project, which has been developed to respond to homelessness, mental health and substance-use issues.
“They can't ask us to do more, and then vote against the things that we are doing – especially when they're exactly the things that they're asking us to do,” he said. “It's easy to act enraged, it's harder to make the decisions about how we're going to invest the resources – and we are investing the resources.”
The three crises response plan will have dedicated staff and resources to address the needs of the unsheltered and to reduce the impacts associated with these issues on businesses and resident, Johnstone said.
According to Johnstone, New Westminster has been advocating to the province on a number of fronts, including the need for a 24/7 shelter, as opposed to the nightly shelter that’s currently operating in the downtown.
“We need proper 24/7 shelter beds in the city. There are challenges downtown related to people not having homes. But the response to that is not to close shelters, or to move them away,” he said. “We went through a week last week with snow on the ground; if we don't have that shelter, people die.”
