‘Many unfortunately were pushed over the edge’: Pandemic leads to exodus of downtown retail tenants
Global News
Storefront retail vacancy rates in the city of Vancouver jumped 2.8 per cent – from 9.3 per cent in spring 2020 to 12.1 per cent a year later.
After serving Western Canada for more than a century, the iconic discount chain known for its annual shoe sales took a walk at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and never returned.
Army & Navy closed its five locations – including its flagship in Gastown – in May 2020, but reopened the New Westminster store for one final liquidation sale the next month.
“The Army & Navy department store will always be in my heart,” owner Jacqui Cohen said at the time.
An official press release stated that Army & Navy had hoped to reopen after shuttering its stores and temporarily laying off staff in March 2020, but the “economic challenges of COVID-19 have proven insurmountable.”
Cohen told Global News the pandemic only exacerbated the sales hit from Amazon and online shopping.
“It just became insurmountable that the company could continue.”
Retail consultant David Ian Gray said he doesn’t think there was any interest in modernizing Army & Navy and believes it ran its course as a retail concept.
“It was really behind the times in terms of modern technology and integrated online systems,” the DIG360 principal told Global News.
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