Richmond BizSense is conducting some old-fashioned gumshoe reporting: literally walking down the sidewalk of a commercial corridor and counting the number of vacant stores. The  exercise turned up the fact last week that 13 percent of the buildings in Carytown are empty. Now, the online business periodical reports, one third of the buildings on Broad Street between Virginia Commonwealth University and the Richmond Convention Center do not have actively operating businesses.

The situation around VCU is no bed of roses, despite the reputation that the university has gained for stimulating redevelopment on its periphery. But the situation deteriorates closer to the center of downtown. Writes Alec Depcryrnski:

“The farther east you walk down Broad Street and away from VCU, the more beat up and empty it gets. There are “For Sale” signs, “For Lease” signs, and signs simply marked “Closed.” Some buildings are boarded up with plywood, others with construction paper and tape.

By comparison, the vacancy rate for office space in the Central Business District is 8.2%, according to a first-quarter report prepared by the commercial brokerage firm Thalhimer. Broad Street’s vacancy rate is also well above the 3.5% vacancy rate for retail space in the City of Richmond, as reported by Thalhimer.

None of the sources Depcrynski consulted offered very persuasive explanations for the corridor’s woes. One noted that VCU’s expansion, which introduced student dormitories and full-time residents, created a “gold rush” mentality. Many businesses catering to the students opened and then went out of business.

Another source suggested that there isn’t enough parking to support a strong retail base. But that shouldn’t matter if many of the patrons are VCU students living nearby, downtown employees or convention goers, most of whom would access the shops and restaurants by foot.

Bacon’s bottom line: My theory, and it’s only a theory, is that the high vacancy rate is a temporary problem caused by the transition of the Broad Street corridor from a low-rent district catering to a low-income, inner city population into something more upscale. Improvements around VCU and the Convention Center have stimulated interest in the historic properties up and down the corridor, leading to a rise in property values. As values rise, the old tenants cannot afford the higher rents that property owners are charging. They are either moving or shutting down.

Thanks to the general economic slowdown, the pace of finding replacements for the old tenants has been slow. If I’m right, in the next economic cycle, new tenants should start moving in, and the corridor will start evolving into a lively mixed-use stretch of theaters, businesses and shops – an architecturally grander version of Carytown. If I’m wrong… well, hopefully that’ll be a few years from now and you’ll forget you ever read this.