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For more than four decades, Ethel’s Boutique has been a fixture in Kitsilano, with the last 30 of those years spent serving customers out of a quaint, one-storey storefront in the 2300-block of West 4th Ave.

Owner Margie Sheppard says her mom, Ethel Pollock, combined her love of fashion and sewing by opening the business in 1970 in the same neighbourhood where she lived.

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Sheppard, who took over the shop about 20 years ago, was forced out of the neighbourhood recently, moving Ethel’s Boutique to a new site at West Broadway and Macdonald Street. The reason? Her landlord plans to redevelop the property, which means Ethel’s Boutique and five other small businesses had to go.

“It’s difficult being a small business. It’s hard to find reasonable rents. Especially when they build new, the rents are out of the ballpark,” said Sheppard.

When she went looking for a new 1,000-sq.-ft. store in the area, she discovered rents as high as $10,000 a month, which, she said, is impossibly high for a small shopowner, given the revenue they would need to earn.