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It's accepted as axiomatic these days that small retail businesses will forever struggle to stay afloat. Mine, a specialty magazine and book store called Magpie Magazine Gallery in Vancouver's funky Commercial Drive district, is twelve years old and still I feel like a short trip out of town, and out of cell phone range, could end with me finding the sheriff's note posted to my front door.

And yet, my small independent store in this lower-rent street generates as much revenue per square foot as is achieved in Canada's best-performing mall, the Pacific Centre, in downtown Vancouver. All my business neighbours feel as provisional as I do, but taken together, our roughly 12-block strip with about the same amount of total floor space as an average WalMart, generates more revenue, raises more gross profit, achieves a better net profit on revenue, employs way more people, provides a much wider range of goods and services, and contributes much more to the civic common good than that average Walmart.

So why is WalMart the most valuable company in the world while the stores of Commercial Drive, if put on the market all together today, would fetch in total a tiny fraction of what each WalMart store is worth? And why are WalMart owners sitting so pretty in the top ten of the world's most wealthy, while I and a lot of my business neighbours eye the official poverty line with daily wariness?

I argue that it's because the equity in small neighbourhood businesses is hidden and locked away, denying small business owners the benefits of access to investment and working capital so critical to the prosperity and success of large companies.

Small business owners are a staunchly sovereign bunch (having founded civilization and all) and they won't let anyone tell them how to run their businesses. While they only need to retain 51 per cent ownership to maintain sovereignty over their own affairs, each small business is too small to engage in offering their remaining shares to the public, and in any event, no sane investor-aside from family and very good friends-would assume the risk of total failure that is the daily reality of most of them.

But, taken together, all the businesses in a commercial district are big enough to sell shares, being the equivalent of an average WalMart, and what's more, a total commercial district is about as stable and blue-chip an investment there could be today. The district I am in is 80 years old. Though in every one of those years a number of stores closed, as a whole, the street has chugged along with nary a ripple year after year.

My solution is to entice a large enough group of businesses in some commercial district to set up a cooperative company that creates a subsidiary investment holding company that engages in stock swaps with each of the participating small businesses such that the holding company comes to own 49% of each small business while the small business owners each come to own some equitable part of the overall holding company. Neither the investment holding company nor the coop that controls it would ever gain controlling interest in any one of the small businesses, but the investment company itself would be one with considerable clout if it came to represent 49% of the interests of an entire district like Commercial Drive.

Furthermore, the holding company would be big enough to sell shares in the public markets where it would be viewed as a very low risk investment. The proceeds of those sales can then revert to the business members of the coop, thereby unlocking the equity they sit on today, mostly unaware even of its existence, and putting it to good use as working capital.

Such share offerings could be marketed as ethical investments since thriving neighbourhood districts cut down on fossil-fuel burning car use, promote locally owned, family-oriented stores, save inner cities, and provide more community goods. They could also be marketed locally as an opportunity for residential neighbours to actually buy into the local shopping districts they use and love-a huge untapped financial resource not available to any individual store because they are all, by themselves, too risky.

The holding company could additionally provide benefits to its owners by taking advantage of the economies of scale it could achieve on purchases of business supplies and services like insurance, courier costs, accounting contracts and more.

The idea requires a neutral third party to gain the trust of owners during the initial set-up. I believe that's a role made for municipal government. I am running for Vancouver City Council as an independent in elections in November partly to pursue this idea. It wouldn't cost the City very much, but the pay-off could be enormous. Neighbourhood commercial districts full of small independent stores may be revived, delivering all the original community-building benefits such districts provided in decades past before the onset of the big box stores.

Kevin Potvin is proprietor of Magpie Magazine Gallery in Vancouver, publisher of The Republic of East Vancouver newspaper, and is an independent candidate for Vancouver City Council in November elections.