Has anyone noticed the amount of for sale and for lease signs on the small businesses in the downtown area of Hamilton? I live on the other side of the city and every time I drive through more and more signs go up! I haven’t seen anything on the news about this and I check the Spec just to see if they write about it, and nothing there either. Just curious if anyone has noticed this too, not just in Hamilton, maybe in your own cities too? I just really think this needs to be publicized more.

There was a whole feature on it in last night's Global TV news at 11. They went downtown and interviewed a bunch of small business owners. It's basically the economy being down on a whole and everyone holding back on their spending. A lot of shops had signs saying they were closed for good and the news anchor did a spiel about how the bailout money should be going to help small businesses that our local areas thrive on. They then did a Q&A on the streets asking people if they would support the local stores and shop at them or go to the big box stores.. and most said they wanted to support the local shops, but since money is tight.. they chose to shop where things are half the price/cheaper at big box stores like walmart just because they can't afford the better alternatives.

Stelco is "temporarily" closed, and Dafasco's on a 4-day work week right now. Everyone's being affected, and are thus cutting back on spending, and going to the cheapest place possible.

In my town there's currently a local hardware store (Week's of Waterdown) and a local lumber yard (Turkstra) but about 2 years ago they built a Rona and a Canadian Tire on the outskirts of town. There's also a Zeller's, and now a Walmart is being put up. I worked at Rona right after it opened for a year (until last July) and it got to the point where the store was so quiet that I went from 25 hours a week to 4 hours. It's just gone down hill from there, and the local businesses in Waterdown are definitely being effected (although people do try to support businesses like Week's, because they've been a part of Waterdown for so long - Week's tends to be busier than Rona, Canadian Tire, or Zellers).