So, since we started looking at restaurants on this blog, two have closed. Now it's three. Harbour Tandoori Grille, a little shop that served Indian food and seemed to get business, closed a few days ago. According to the sign, they were behind on rent.
This underlines the tremendous pressure retailers are in our neighbourhood. There are thousands of us who live here yet we seem to not give these shops enough business to get by, particularly in the winter months. It seems like the ones that are destined to thrive are brand name franchises?
So the loss of another independent business is not great for business. What could they have done to get more business? Market better? Work to get a robust delivery service?
Well, there goes a viable option for food other than subs (we have three).
thanks for starting up this blog!
ReplyDeletei liked the indian place -- kinda messy, but the food was good. however, it's hard to tell if its demise was the result of stingy locals or what's going on in the wider economy. restaurants are suffering everywhere.
i was thinking of porticello the other day. i thought it'd do well after the hto park/spadina wavedeck opened, but obviously it didn't. however, now that i think about it, you could hardly notice it from the street. kinda sad.
Our plesaure, we're glad people are finding this blog.
ReplyDeleteWe notice that restaurants in this area are less busy -- maybe it's just the time of year, but maybe it is the economy. Who knows, maybe people are eating in more.
There's been some activity at Porticello site the last week. We'll check it out soon but looks like some sort of renovation...
Maybe the rents being charged by landlords for retail on Queen's Quay reflect that they are big-time developers of high rise apartment buildings who would rather have tenants with strong "corporate covenants" than independents who would contribute to the character and growth of the area. The rents at the foot of most of the buildings are unrealistic for any tenant other than formula-type franchises, be they food or cell-phones... Sadly, the closing of this Indian restaurant is just another example of poor planning when there were some good examples on this continent to look (eg Baltimore Inner Harbour) of those harbour front developments that have thought ahead and consequently now have diverse, evolving and sustainable retail destinations.
ReplyDelete"Anonymous" makes a good point about the retail rents on Queen's Quay being prohibitive for independants. If you ask the condo-tower owners they'd probably say they have to charge such exhorbitant rents because of taxes levied by the city. With that and the north-side architecture obscuring all shop fronts, it's hard to see how the proposed $300 million "improvement" to the appearance of Queen's Quay will do anything towards it being a more appealing community for the 15,000 apartment dwellers in the immediate area. Nevertheless, there are some stand-outs in customer-service that deserve our recognition and support. There are probably more but here are some: Several attentive, helpful and happy-sounding staff at Shoppers make that trip enjoyable. Double Double Pizza at Rees and QQ has new management and couldn't be more eager to do a great job. Rabba? Plenty of choice, great staff and an absolute necessity. The Radisson? A jewel by any standard. Pier 4? Please stay. And my absolute favourite....Mr.Movie at Lower Simcoe and Queen's Quay. The staff are knowledgeable, thoughtful, endlessly patient and have been there a while so they remember your preferences. That's not a lot, but it's a start and we can build on that by supporting them.
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