In the 58 years since John Diener began working for his father at Saslove’s Meat Market, he’s seen a lot of ByWard Market businesses close up shop.
There used to be about a dozen butchers, but Saslove’s eventually became the last one standing.
Most of the fish and produce shops are gone too. Those losses took decades, but Diener says the pace of change has seemed to pick up.
“It’s definitely accelerated,” said Diener, who took over Saslove’s with his brother in the 1980s. “There have been more businesses closed in the market in the last two years than probably in the previous 20 years.”
Courtyard Restaurant closed its doors early this year after four decades in business, and the space remains empty. A Rideau Street shoe store is now a hair salon. A Dalhousie Street florist is now a vape shop, while a boutique a few blocks away is now an Instagrammable floral-themed cafe.
Diener is closing too, ending Saslove’s 70-year run. He said costs have gone up, and traffic never recovered from the pandemic. His business was always profitable before, but he says he hasn’t turned a profit in five years.
In his view, the ByWard Market has “declined as a retail shopping area.”
Some businesses that moved in during the pandemic have closed almost as quickly, like Afrotecture, which opened a ByWard Market shopfront in December 2020 to showcase Black artisans.
Owner Resa Solomon-St. Lewis was hoping traffic in the area would soon rebound.
“It didn’t actually ever come to fruition,” she said. “Society has changed and how people travel, how people shop, that’s all changed. And so we never saw it resume to those pre-pandemic levels.”
The tour buses never came back in anything like the same numbers, she said, and she had to deal with the added challenge of the 2022 convoy protests — which left “a huge impact” on her staff and even forced her to shut down temporarily.
This March, she closed the physical store and moved her business online.
New entrepreneurs still see potential
But those challenges haven’t deterred entrepreneurs from seeing opportunity in the ByWard Market and filling up those vacated storefronts with new life.Â
Last year, Mohammed Echchaje opened Marrakech Crafts to sell Moroccan handicrafts, including handmade leather bags.
With its diversity of cultural offerings, the ByWard Market is still the best place in Ottawa to reach tourists, Echchaje said.
“The ByWard Market is still a meeting place, a place that remains very rich in culture,” he said in French. “We hope that it always stays that way.”Â
Echchaje said the first year in business has been “so-so” — a reality he blames on economic challenges and the cost of living — but he has no plans to leave the market.
He sees “a lot of effort” to attract more people to the market and to fill it with an even richer cultural mix.
Visits down since 2019
The ByWard Market District Authority, which began operations in November, didn’t have data on how many businesses have opened or closed during the pandemic.
In its annual report released in June, it counted 18.6 million individual visits to the market, short of the 25.6 million in 2019.
Victoria Williston, the authority’s communications manager, said their goal is to “ensure that the ByWard Market remains a premier destination that seamlessly blends its rich history with contemporary charm.”Â
She pointed to “innovative retail concepts” like the Immigrant Entrepreneur Canada pop-up shop on York Street — where Irina Khazanova was selling Russian pies last week.
Originally from Moscow, she came to Canada four years ago with her wife to escape anti-LGBT persecution, but has held onto the childhood tradition of baking the soft, pillowy pies of her homeland.
Friday was only her third day in the ByWard Market — each immigrant entrepreneur has the pop-up for just one week — but she sees a lot to like in the neighbourhood.
“I really like being here because you get to see all different kinds of people,” she said. “You get to see tourists and people who work here and are just looking for lunch. So it’s a really versatile audience here, which is exactly what I’ve been looking for.”
Khazanova said her dream is to open a brick-and-mortar shop where she could also offer Russian teas to go with her pies. Though she thinks the Glebe, Sandy Hill or Wellington West might be her best bets, she hasn’t ruled out the market.
Work trends, not public safety, blamed for departures
Diener has a lot of theories for why the market has seen so much churn in recent years, although he doesn’t believe that frequently expressed concerns about public safety are the main factor.
“We don’t see anything that really should scare people if they’re just coming down here to do shopping,” he said. “I live in the market. I work in the market. I wouldn’t think of living anywhere else.”
Instead, he thinks the work-from-home trend is a main driver, as it’s cut off the afternoon rush of public servants that once fuelled businesses like his.
Even now, as federal workers prepare to come back for another day each week, Diener fears their shopping habits have changed for good.
He also blames the near disappearance of fresh fruit and vegetable stands on the street in front of his store.
“If you look outside, there’s only one stand selling produce now, whereas years ago both sides of the street were fully occupied with farmers’ stalls,” he said. “So that was a major factor.”
(Williston said the ByWard Market has a no-fee vending initiative to attract farmers and has just brought on another vendor, Bleuet Mercier.)
Diener said he’s ready for retirement, but giving up the family business is still a time of emotion and loss. When Saslove’s closes at the end of September, he’ll be saying goodbye to longtime staff members, some of whom have been working with him for nearly two decades.
“This is family, even though we’re not blood-related,” he said. “Well, we are related through blood — the blood of the meat.”