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Sitting in her diminutive St-Denis St. delicatessen stocked with eastern European treats, Café Mimi owner Lily Mlabenovich delivered a sombre diagnosis of the health of her boulevard.

“I think this street is dead,” she said. “It’s just not attractive, with all these vacancies.”

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With one in five ground-level stores or restaurants sitting empty on the one-kilometre stretch of St-Denis north of Sherbrooke St., Mlabenovich’s lament is common, a collective sigh of despair for a faded architectural jewel once considered the grande dame of Montreal shopping.

St-Denis St. is one of many commercial arteries with health issues. Despite a robust economy and high employment, 15 per cent of street-level retail spaces in Montreal sit empty — roughly 1,000 out of 7,000 — a statistic that is so troubling and entrenched, the city is kicking off a public consultation Tuesday to find solutions. Among the causes cited are some of the highest commercial property taxes in Canada, avaricious landlords demanding high rents, online shopping, restrictive zoning policies and debilitating road construction.