This study determines what new retail business and investment opportunities exist in the CBRM’s retail areas. The document includes a thorough review of the CBRM’s current retail inventory centred on the largest community of Sydney, and then estimates the realistic retail trade areas of Sydney and other retail nodes in the CBRM including Sydney River, North Sydney, Sydney Mines, Glace Bay, New Waterford, and Louisbourg.  It then provides a retail expenditure profile across various retail categories/store types to indicate retail inflow/outflow and opportunities that retail areas could potentially pursue.

This study was carried out over the period of January to April 2020, with a data update and additional on-the-ground fieldwork conducted in February and March 2021 to refresh expenditure data with 2019 data releases from Manifold Data Mining Inc, and to conduct and include a new Retail Market Assessment for the town of Louisbourg.