BURLINGTON — Shoppers were just starting to trickle into Homeport, the home supply store on Church Street in Burlington, as workers set up a Christmas-themed display inside the front door this week.
Upstairs, store owner Mark Bouchett was sipping his morning coffee as he talked about his expectations for the holiday shopping season.
“We’re feeling good,” said Bouchett, who also chairs the commission that oversees the Church Street Marketplace. “We’re geared and staffed and stocked.”
But he said he can’t say the same for some other retailers nearby, who “I know are struggling right now.”
Bouchett worries that shoppers could be less inclined than usual to visit downtown this season. He contends that’s due, at least in part, to a loosely defined but oft-repeated perception that Church Street — and the surrounding blocks that make up the central shopping district of Vermont’s largest city — is not as appealing or safe as it’s been in the past.
He thinks that perception is rooted in some reality, pointing to signs of a post-pandemic surge in mental illness and substance use disorder on city streets. The state’s dire housing crisis, he said, has left more and more people with no other place to go. He described having several concerning interactions with people on and around Church Street, but said it generally isn’t true that these issues have made downtown a less safe place to shop and dine.
Bouchett and other downtown retailers said this perception may be making it harder for their businesses to succeed, on top of other challenges such as hiring and retaining staff, increased costs of goods and services amid persistent high inflation, and ongoing competition with big box stores and online-only retailers.
“It’s tough,” Bouchett said, “because my customers have other options. They could go out to Williston, to Taft Corners — or maybe to the Essex Experience instead.”
Both city officials and the Burlington Business Association published data this month on recent trends in downtown shopping, though they paint somewhat different pictures.
According to city data, daily foot traffic in the first eight months of 2023 on Church Street was on par with the three years before Covid-19 struck Vermont.
At the same time, city data shows that gross sales in the area were lower over the first five months of 2023 than in the same period in 2022 and 2021. Gross sales this year were also lower than the average amount of gross sales from 2017 to 2019, even when adjusted for inflation.
The business association, meanwhile, reported this month that more than 80% of city businesses that responded to a survey noticed a decrease in foot traffic in their stores this year versus last year, and more than 50% said their sales declined year-over-year. The association also reported that half of merchants have had staff members quit over concerns about public safety downtown.
Kelly Devine, executive director of the Burlington Business Association, said these reported slumps in traffic and sales could mean that the holiday shopping season — when many retailers make a third or more of their annual revenue — has extra importance this year.
“Many have said that this holiday season could be a make or break for them,” she said in an interview. “And that’s because they’re going into the fourth quarter down for the year.”
The city’s business community has raised alarm about public safety downtown for years. In 2021, merchants described a pattern of unsettling incidents on a call with Mayor Miro Weinberger, including regular harassment of women employees on Church Street. A fairly small group of people, they said at the time, were causing problems for many.
Bouchett thinks there are also other reasons downtown could feel less safe. Many businesses have had to curtail their hours since the start of the pandemic, he said, likely resulting in fewer shoppers — and emptier, quieter streets — as the afternoons turn into nights. There are also fewer office workers downtown than there were before the pandemic, he said, workers who may have previously gone shopping in the area after work.
Adding to the challenges for business owners, several merchants said this week, have been increasing rates of retail theft downtown — an assertion that city data supports.
More than 450 retail thefts were reported in the city wards that make up downtown from January to the end of August 2023, compared to just over 290 in all of 2022, according to data from the Burlington Police Department.
The rate of reported retail theft is up even more compared to pre-pandemic years. For instance, about 260 reports were recorded in 2019.
At City Hardware on College Street, assistant manager Cal Leibenguth witnesses theft, or attempted theft, “every day,” he said this week. He said he worries that when customers pass City Hall Park across the street — a place where people who are experiencing homelessness regularly congregate and that has drawn scrutiny over public safety concerns for years — they’re then less likely to want to come back.
At the same time, several business owners noted that these challenges are not unique to Burlington — or to Vermont. For Todd Gross, the manager of Phoenix Books on Bank Street, challenges with retail theft, for instance, are part of doing business in any urban environment and aren’t necessarily a result of anything Burlington has done wrong.
“If you travel around to any other city, you see the same kind of issues,” Gross said. “Burlington is not exempt from issues that are endemic to our (society) right now.”
Gross and others also said they think news coverage of crime and violence downtown, while based in fact, has contributed to a perception that the area is less safe than it is. This perception seems especially strong among people who live in and around Chittenden County, according to Tim Pratt, owner of Global Pathways Jewelry on Church Street. He said that he and other merchants have not noticed a decline in out-of-state tourists at their stores.
“I hear it often from local people — ‘Oh, we don’t go downtown anymore.’ And that’s really disappointing,” said Pratt, who commutes daily from his home in Richford.
News outlets have written a spate of stories in recent weeks about businesses shuttering across downtown. Recent reported retail closures include Black Diamond, Slate and The Body Shop.
And as VTDigger reported in September, Outdoor Gear Exchange, a fixture of the Church Street Marketplace, expects to downsize, but not close, its downtown Burlington store as it opens a second location at the Essex Experience, which owner Marc Sherman has called a “reimagining.”
Kara Alnasrawi, Burlington’s director of business and workforce development, shared a list showing that nine businesses have closed or are planning to close in the city this year. Some of those businesses — such as Walgreens on Cherry Street — are national chains that respond to factors beyond what’s happening locally, she said.
At the same time, Alnasrawi listed 18 businesses that opened this year or are slated to open in the next six months, including several that would replace businesses slated for closure.
Alnasrawi said she disagrees with the assessment that public safety concerns are the major driving force behind businesses leaving Burlington, while noting that “the current trends in public safety are absolutely concerning.”
And she echoed business owners’ concerns that while “people’s feelings are valid,” their perception might not match what’s really happening.
“When people come downtown, they may see things that they didn’t used to see before — and they may see things that make them uncomfortable,” she said, pointing to the impacts of the housing crisis and high rates of substance use. “And I think sometimes people can conflate feeling uncomfortable with a true safety and security issue.”
Clarification: This story has been edited to more precisely describe the Burlington Business Association’s assertions about downtown foot traffic and sales.
