Rising rents pushing long-time Amsterdam stores out of city's shopping districts

Amsterdam’s shopping streets are losing their authenticity due to rising rents. Small, often decades-old shops can't keep up and are forced to shut down. This month, the centuries-old tea shop ‘t Zonnetje, which opened on the Haarlemmerdijk in 1642, closed its doors. Locals want the municipality to intervene, but some experts worry that’s a bad idea, AT5 reports.

Real estate expert Herman Kok recognizes that the street scene is increasingly dominated by franchises. He stressed that property owners have to cover their own costs, and if a small, local shop can’t achieve the required turnover per square meter, the shop must move or disappear. He called it a shame, but a natural process in the free market.

There is a way that the municipality can intervene, Kok continued. The rental value is often determined by what a landlord can do with a building. So it could help an authentic shop if the municipality protects the interior of the building, for example, so that it cannot be changed. That could dampen the rental value and protect the tenant. “If you, as a municipality, determine and limit what a property owner can do with a building, you also limit how high the rent can be. You really have to make policy in this area building by building, and a good zoning plan must be drawn up per street.”

But social geographer Iris Hagemans urges caution. The risk of too much interference from the municipality is a shopping street that doesn’t meet the demand. “With all the policies in the world, you cannot prevent shops from having to close,” she told AT5. “It’s a shame, because those authentic shops give the street atmosphere.” But at the same time, they’re not always the shops where Amsterdammers spend their money.

In the worst-case scenario, attempts at protecting certain shops could turn the municipality into the taste police. It is very complicated to determine which entrepreneurs do or do not add something to a shopping area without taking socio-economic status into account, she said. “If the municipality starts interfering with which local entrepreneurs are allowed to stay, that is risky and encourages discrimination,” Hagemans said.