Rideau Street music store packing up and moving, citing rising crime [Video]

For 42 years, Steve’s Music has operated in the same location on Rideau Street, steps away from the ByWard Market.

But the store will soon be relocating to a new home in the city, after facing years of rising crime rates in the area.

“We can’t stick around and hope for the best, because we’ve been doing it for the last few years,” said store manager Daniel Sauvé, calling it a difficult but necessary decision.

Steve’s Music isn’t moving for just “one reason,” said Sauvé, citing instead the challenges of the “the last 15 years of doing business on Rideau Street.”

“We have to go back to when Rideau got basically gutted for infrastructure. Then we got the LRT delays, then we got COVID … it’s just one thing [that] piles on the others.”

But crime and drug use has made the situation “critical” over the past year and a …