A Vancouver restaurant owner is proposing a new "cultural" grant be put in place to help relieve the burden small businesses are faced within the city.
Brandon Grossutti, owner at PiDGin Restaurant, created an online petition addressed to B.C.’s minsters of tourism and jobs and Vancouver city council requesting what he described as a commercial cultural grant.
“Right now in B.C., small businesses are suffering a great deal,” said Grossutti, adding that many of his colleagues in the arts and hospitality industry are finding it difficult to make a profit.
"Everyone is struggling right now and just keeping their head above water, or losing money. We need to act now before we lose all these wonderful places.”
He said small businesses are getting hit hard by taxes, and a new grant would help.
"This commercial cultural grant is an opportunity to lower the tax burden on small businesses within B.C., while also punishing those that sit on empty spaces as gigantic corporations,” he says.
Grossutti said the idea would work similar to how the B.C. homeowners' grant operates.
“If you are deemed a cultural entity within B.C., whether that be a restaurant, a pub, an art space, a music venue, anything along those lines, you will get a percentage off of your taxes,” he said.
"Property taxes will be reduced by an amount, which will be shared by both you and the landowner. So they're incentivized to have a small business in there."
'Community fabric'
After the COVID-19 pandemic, Grossutti said he has watched businesses close and spaces sit vacant.
“One of the things that we're seeing as our cities are starting to empty out and commercial spaces are just being boarded up and for lease signs, is a consolidation of commercial owners in the city, whether it be real estate income trusts or it be large property developers,” he says.
He hopes it’s an idea that politicians will support, and he encourages landlords to lease their premises to eligible businesses.
“The fear I have is that we start to lose our cultural institutions, the things that hold our community fabric together and create placemaking for all of us and all the things that we love about our city, and if those things don't exist, well, what do we have left that occupy those spaces?” he says.
To be eligible for such a grant, Grossutti said the landlord would lease space to a vetted cultural business entity, which brings in under $3 million in revenue.
The business must be owned by a B.C. resident or corporation and it must contribute to the local cultural landscape. The business could be a restaurant, bar, pub, music venue, dance centre or an art/music festival.
'No compelling evidence'
In April, a group of small business leaders argued unsuccessfully at Vancouver city hall to have council reduce a portion of the property tax load that businesses will pay this year and shift it to homeowners’ bills.
Council was unanimous in rejecting the leaders’ pleas and based it on an independent review of the city’s tax policy by Ernst & Young, which concluded there was “no compelling evidence” to shift a bigger portion of tax to residential property owners.
The leaders were asking for a two per cent shift over four years. Residential property owners currently pay 57.1 per cent of the tax share, and non-residential 42.9 per cent.
Representatives of four business improvement association societies, a property tax expert and a senior policy analyst from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) requested council give businesses a tax break.
