Business owners in the ByWard Market say the latest fees from their new property manager could force them to close up shop.

Ottawa Markets, the recently-formed, not-for-profit municipal corporation in charge of the market, has hired Paradigm Properties to manage the building.

With that change has come much higher costs.

Edward Olszowka, owner of Wedel Touch of Europe, on the ground floor of the parking garage at 70 Clarence Street.

He said the days are numbered for his two-year-old business, selling European specialty foods.

"I lost everything ... before retirement I have nothing now," Olszowka said.

The store employs five people, though Olszowka is often at the cash register himself — chatting with customers about their purchases and offering them a free hard candy, as he says, for health, for breath or for digestion.

What isn't sitting well with him is the list of operating costs the property manager provided, which has increased the monthly cost of staying in the building by nearly a third from about $6,800 to $9,400.

"This is just, for me, impossible to make so much money now," he said.

Olszowka said he has people maintain his shop and comes in early to clear the snow. He said snow clearing is now one of the lists itemized in the document, and he wants an explanation for the jump in costs.

'My last penny'

Next door at Fairway Trading, a store that sells traditional Chinese wares and bonsai trees, Mia Hu said she's also feeling the pressure on her bottom line.

"It will take my last penny," she said.

She said the property manager has more than doubled the operating fees and that it feels "unfair" that she was given a list of items and told to pay for them.

Mia Hu has owned Fairway Trading in the ByWard Market for six years. (Matthew Kupfer/CBC)

The combined rent and maintenance fees for the store have gone up about $1,000 a month.

"The store is my whole life. I enjoy managing this store and working here and this kind of business almost closed. My store is the last one so give us some space to survive," Hu said.

Not rent increase, just cost recovery: landlord

In a statement attributed to Peter Hume, the chair of Ottawa Markets, the organization said the increased charges are not a rent increase — they're meant to recover the actual cost of maintenance and operations.

"We cannot speak to how the former landlord determined operating costs or if and how any subsidy was applied to reduce those operating costs," the statement said.

The statement said property managers meet one-on-one with tenants to review operating budgets and bills. Those costs are audited at the end of the year to ensure only costs directly associated to the leased property are covered.

The organization said it could not comment on specific leases or negotiations and that "if tenants have suggestions for ways to reduce direct operating costs Ottawa Markets property management staff are always available to meet with tenants."​

Rideau-Vanier Coun. Mathieu Fleury said he wouldn't weigh into the dispute.

He said Ottawa Markets is a non-profit organization established to handle day-to-day operations of all city owned buildings in the ByWard Market and end political interference in how the properties are run. The organization does not pay money to the City and all the money collected is reinvested into market operations.