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But the time to sell seemed right, he said, given his age, the rising tax costs and the handsome profit he could realize in the overheated real estate market.

Ron Knechtel, co-owner of Blenheim Imports, has already sold to a developer and will be shutting down May 31. At 56 years old, he said he wasn’t ready to retire, but, like Burnside, his rising property taxes, strict city environmental regulations and the real estate market made the time right to sell. Knechtel and his partner sold the property to a Vancouver developer six months ago.

“The property tax, ” Knechtel said, “got to the point where it was close to $90,000 this year, and it’s not practical to stay in business anymore.”

Knechtel said the city’s ever-stringent environmental policies were problematic for a business like his, too. He said a city inspector had prohibited him from even washing his customers’ cars on the property.

Knechtel, who grew up in Dunbar, has been at his West 12th address for 24 years. For 15 years before that, he worked at two other shops, both on the Westside. The shop employs seven people, operates five bays and services about 25 cars a day. Some of his customers, he said, are from families who have been coming to his shop for two or three generations.

“When we tell people we’re shutting down, they just can’t believe it. When you serve people for so long, they grow to become friends.

The changes to the Westside, he said, dismayed him.

“It just seems like everything’s going. There’s going to be no services for the public here. When you get all the trades people coming in to build houses here and the like, they don’t live in Vancouver. They’re coming from Surrey and beyond. It just seems like the city’s being gutted. And I grew up in Vancouver. I grew up in Dunbar. Do I think I’m going to stick around here? I don’t know if I could.”

pmcmartin@postmedia.com