Please read what I wrote again. I never said to discount accessibility, traffic, public safety, etc. It is the less obvious fees/policies that cities impose. Some are triggered only when a business changes hands.

But it also tells that many have no idea how much upfront money is required for these upgrades to get aging buildings into compliance and that’s when you haven’t even started selling anything. You need at least 500k of liquidity to just ‘start’ (if it’s anything like a small cafe as an example) and that amount won’t even last past 6 months given the nature of how consumer habits work in North America.

Add in the lack of trades in Canada, the price skyrockets - I mean, that’s a whole other story.

The silver lining in there is that people should be claiming tax credits/breaks where applicable. Many provinces and federal taxes for business have built-in incentives.

Part of operating a brick and mortar business yes, but digital is largely unregulated.

Brick and mortar then largely gets captured by large corporations and main Street gets hollowed out.

Public safety is important! But municipalities should be approving permits same day and making processes as simple as possible, and use standardized non bespoke rules.

Accessibility… also important! But there should be more carve outs for small operators. It’s one of those things that sounds nice but has actually caused things to be less accessible. Having an empty closed store front is the opposite of accessible.