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SASKATOON – Two small business owners have left Broadway Avenue after struggling to keep up with ballooning rent. Metal Designz shut its doors Mar. 19, while Blondo’s On Broadway closed Mar. 31.

Shelley Hubbs, the owner of Metal Designz, said a new lease would cost at least 33 per cent more than her previous five-year lease.

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“I think in the next couple years, we’re going to see a lot of small businesses closing. There’ll be more big box and chain stores that have a bigger backing that can afford the crazy rents,” Hubbs said.

The chain-mail and jewellery shop is now operating solely online.

Next door, Wendy Sully said she has no choice but to close Blondo’s after 23 years in business. There are now three spaces available for lease at the corner of Broadway and Main Street: Metal Designz, Blondo’s and the RBC Royal Bank.

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Sully will no longer own a business, choosing to be a stylist at The Crop on Main. She was willing to absorb a $900 monthly increase to her rent at Blondo’s, until she saw a posting to lease her space.

“All of my staff have left because [the real estate company] will not renew the lease, other than month-to-month,” Sully said.

Colliers International research manager Duncan Mayer couldn’t confirm the month-to-month issue. However, he said prices have been climbing on Broadway for ten years due to high demand and limited retail space.

“Broadway is one of our more expensive neighbourhoods in Saskatoon,” Mayer said.

In the past year, 15 businesses have moved out of Broadway. Another 15 have moved in. Fourteen spaces are currently vacant, according to Sarah Marchildon, executive director of the Broadway Business Improvement District.

There are more vacancies now than in “many years past” – a result of growth, not disinterest, Marchildon said.

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“We have multiple new buildings that have been renovated to have, essentially, new bays for new businesses to be in,” she said.

New businesses moving into an area can impact rent for long-time tenants, according Chelsea Willness, with the University of Saskatchewan’s department of human resources & organizational behaviour at the Edwards School of Business.

“It’s not that growth and that type of thing isn’t positive. I think it is, but it does affect people in different ways,” she said.