The downtown Montreal merchants’ association is demanding mayoral candidates set the record straight on how they will tackle fires in vacant buildings, after two properties in the area went up in flames.

Glen Castanheira, executive director of the SDC Montréal Centre-Ville, says that for nearly a decade, the association has been calling on the city to adopt strict rules for landlords who choose to keep their buildings vacant.

“We’re seeing a red hot real estate market that is having prices explode, which results in some properties being worth so much money that it is much more profitable to keep them vacant and wait for a buyout or a new project to be proposed rather than renting it out.”

He says Montreal is one of the rare cities in North America that doesn’t have strict rules to keep landlords responsible for the upkeep of properties they leave unoccupied.

Over a span of two days, two vacant buildings on Sainte-Catherine Street, the city’s biggest commercial artery, caught fire.

The first was on Oct. 29, in the east end, at the corner of Sainte-Catherine and de la Visitation streets. The second, on Oct. 30, gutted the historic and defunct Super Sexe strip club, located at 690 Sainte-Catherine Street West, in the downtown core.

Nicolas Angers, whose new gym, Boxxing, is near the old strip club, says its initial opening set for March 2020 was delayed by the pandemic until Oct. 4, 2021. Now, he has to close its doors for another week.

“Our studio per se… hasn’t been directly affected by the fire, but there’s been smoke that went inside, so this smell is really important,” he said.

“We’re still lucky in all this because we didn’t go on fire. But yeah, it’s very difficult,”

Keep reading on CBC News