Dayzee’s Move To Riverview After 35 Years In Downtown Moncton
RIVERVIEW – Dayzee’s Fashions, a gently-used clothing and accessories store, has reopened at 540 Pinewood Rd., after moving from its downtown Moncton location, where it has been located for 35 years.
Shannon Shaban, who has owned the store with her mother Bonnie for the last 10 years, says she decided to move to Riverview because she doesn’t feel safe downtown.
“The area’s getting a little rough downtown, and we just needed a good, positive change,” she said.
She says she had great neighbours at the plaza on 110 St. George Street and doesn’t want to hurt their business. But being a used-clothing store, Dayzee’s was often a first-stop for newly-released prisoners, who’d often “make it known to everyone that they just got out of jail,” Shaban said.
She said people under the influence of drugs or alcohol also often come into her store and “make a mess” in the restroom. She’s also been a victim of shoplifting, and at least once, she got a bag of donated clothes that were littered with syringes and needles.
But Shaban said even if things weren’t as rough downtown, she would’ve still made the move because it was time for a change.
Since the Riverview location opened on November 2, Shaban says it’s been pretty busy. She says the community there has been welcoming and her staff members also loves the new location.
“Our whole life is changed here. Our clientele is totally different. We have no fears…well, we fear a little bit when we go outside at night, because we’re a walk from the forest. We’re from the city, so we don’t know if we’re gonna come across a bear or a coyote, or a wolf,” she says.
All of Dayzee’s seven employees live with mental health challenges, “and it wasn’t great for them to see things that they were seeing” in the old location, Shaban said.
Shaban said it’s always been a practice at Dayzee’s to hire those often overlooked by employers because of mental health challenges. While they do need some extra accommodation, like more breaks and shorter hours, they’ve been great workers.
“We keep it positive, and we know right from wrong. We try to direct them the right way, and it works. We’re like a family,” she says.
Her employees all live in Moncton. So Shaban, not wanting them to have to pay for bus or take extra time commuting, drives them all to work in the morning. She and Bonnie then drive them home at the end of the day.
The shop now opens until 7 p.m. Mondays through Wednesdays and until 8 p.m. Thursdays and Fridays. It’s also open until 5 p.m. on Saturday.
“This is new to us. We’ve never opened past dark,” said Shaban.
The new shop is a bit smaller than the old one, but Dayzee’s plans to take over at least parts of the space next door, once Caravan and Company’s pop-up shop closes in mid-December.
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Throughout the pandemic, donations have continued to flow to Dayzee’s.
“The donations were amazing. It is unbelievable, and we came up with a process to quarantine everything,” Shaban said, explaining that the clothes sit for two weeks in a separate sorting area before they make it to the shop floor.
540 Pinewood is owned by Adelin Properties, the same company that owns 110 St. George St. The plaza in Riverview was built in 2015, and at first it was difficult to attract commercial tenants there because the population in Riverview wasn’t as high as its neighbouring municipalities, said Adelin’s property manager Jocelyne Dupuis.
Retail in general has not been doing well during the pandemic. But the community’s high support for local businesses, and now Covid-19, have changed minds, she said.
“People are maybe understanding more the value of being in a small area, or maybe understanding more that if we support local businesses, our economy will do better,” she said.
“So I think more local businesses are trying to set up in maybe more remote areas. And we’re able to offer much better pricing in Riverview because we have lower property taxes there. That was one of the things with Dayzee’s,” she said.
On the other hand, Dupuis says the problem of safety and security downtown has been worsening in the last few years.
Adelin bought 110 St. George about a year ago, but has several other properties in the downtown core. She says during the pandemic, with emptier streets, there’s fewer deterrents for people to commit crimes.
Now, Adelin is renovating the plaza on St. George, which is home to Halo Donuts and Art Shack, among others.
Among the security measures taken into consideration is “tons of tons of” additional lighting, Dupuis said. But she said the changes wouldn’t have been enough for Dayzee’s because their experience had been bad for so many years.
So far, Adelin Properties has seen Dayzee’s move to Riverview, while another tenant at 110 St. George chose to go with a different property manager in Dieppe. They’ve also seen the reputation downtown deter potential clients from out of Moncton, that’s something concerning for business.
“We’re getting the reputation across Canada of, I don’t want to move to your downtown because it doesn’t sound good right now,” she said.
Dupuis, who is on the board of directors of business group Downtown Moncton Centre-ville Inc., says the business community has been pushing the city, the province and RCMP for long-term and short-term solutions.
In addition to support services for those experiencing homelessness, and addictions, she says “the biggest thing is more presence, whether it be with security or just people in general, for [those committing crimes] to feel like they’re overcrowded.”
“We need more people downtown,” Dupuis said. “It’s a catch-22 situation. We have to grow maybe to make it better, but you can’t grow until it’s better. So we need somebody to kind of step up and be the first leader in it.”
Inda Intiar is a reporter for Huddle. Send her story suggestions: [email protected]