Park Extension’s commercial arteries, Jean-Talon, Ogilvy, Querbes and Beaumont, have long been defined by immigrant-owned small businesses: South Asian grocers, Greek bakeries, textile shops, halal butchers, cafés, repair shops and family restaurants that open early and close late. Together, they give Parc-Ex its unmistakable identity: dense, multicultural and entrepreneurial.
This ecosystem, built over decades by newcomers who invested their savings and hopes in the neighbourhood, is now under growing pressure. As property values and operating costs rise across Montréal, Park Extension, once known for more affordable rents, is no longer sheltered from those forces. For business owners who have already survived a pandemic, inflation and supply-chain shocks, a new question hangs in the air: will they be able to remain in Parc-Ex at all?
A Neighbourhood Built on Immigrant Entrepreneurship
For generations, Park Extension has been one of Québec’s main landing points for new arrivals. A large majority of residents are renters, many of them immigrants and refugees, and the neighbourhood has repeatedly been identified as one of the poorest in the province despite its rich cultural life.
Small businesses have been at the centre of that story. Modest storefronts became grocery stores, bakeries, tailors, travel agencies, barber shops and community cafés. These enterprises offered jobs, informal credit and a first professional foothold for families starting over in a new country.
That model depended on relatively stable commercial rents and local building owners. As the broader real-estate market has shifted, that stability has weakened.
Rising Costs, Narrow Margins
Like other main-street merchants in Montréal, Park Extension shopkeepers now face higher lease costs when contracts come up for renewal, alongside increased municipal taxes, insurance and energy bills. In many cases, revenue has not kept pace.
Most of these businesses operate on thin margins: grocers and markets rely on high volume and low mark-ups; restaurants are squeezed by food inflation; small services depend on a loyal but price-sensitive clientele. A sizable jump in rent or extra fixed charges can be enough to push a long-standing business into the red.
Some owners have already been forced to downsize, share space or close altogether. Each time a storefront goes dark, it sends a signal up and down the street, and raises fears about what might replace it.
The Commercial Face of Gentrification
Gentrification in Parc-Ex is often discussed in terms of housing, but its effects are clearly visible on the commercial side as well. New residential projects near the MIL campus and along Beaumont and Acadie have helped fuel speculation, reshaping expectations about what landlords can charge in both apartments and commercial units.
When leases turn over, higher-paying tenants, often from outside the neighbourhood, are in a better position to take over prime locations. The result is not a loss of business activity, but a transformation of it. Established grocers and family restaurants risk being replaced by more standardized, more expensive offerings that are less connected to local needs.
For residents, that means fewer affordable places to eat, shop and gather. For newcomers, it narrows the range of entry-level jobs and entrepreneurial opportunities that made Park Extension a launchpad in the first place.
When a Storefront Closes, More Than a Business Disappears
In Park Extension, the closure of a familiar business is a social event as much as an economic one. A grocery store that disappears can force seniors and families without cars to travel further for basic necessities. A low-cost restaurant often doubles as an informal meeting place where patrons speak their own language and find news, contacts or community support. A small services shop might offer translation, job leads or advice alongside its official trade.
When such establishments vanish, part of the neighbourhood’s informal support network vanishes with them. The street looks less like Parc-Ex and more like everywhere else.
What Support Could Look Like
Across Montréal, there is growing discussion about how to protect small commercial tenants on traditional main streets. Measures being floated include incentives for landlords who keep rents at reasonable levels, zoning that favours smaller commercial units rather than large consolidated spaces, and targeted assistance for immigrant entrepreneurs facing steep increases at renewal.
For neighbourhoods like Park Extension, these debates are not abstract. They go directly to the question of whether its distinctive mix of cultures and independent businesses will survive the next wave of market pressure.
What happens over the next few years, in city hall, at the bargaining table and in the local real-estate market, will help determine whether the small businesses that built Parc-Ex can stay in place, or whether the neighbourhood’s commercial heart will slowly be priced out of the very streets it helped make vibrant.
