By Zenab Bagha
The loss of two specialty retail stores on Elgin Street and the appearance of more restaurants have some business owners concerned that the street is losing its diversity.
Two of the street’s specialty retail stores, Organised Sound and Invisible Cinema, had to move when the landlord refused to renew their leases. Organised Sound moved to 591A Bank St. and Invisible Cinema is now located on 319 Lisgar St.
The landlord has since advertised to rent the space for a restaurant.
Mark Boushey, owner and manager of Boushey’s Fruit Market, says while restaurants have been good for business on the street, “the problem is you have less variety of people coming down to the street. Fewer families come down here.”
Boushey’s family has owned the store since 1947. He says there used to be more bakeries, variety stores and clothing stores on the street. Now, he says customers complain about “the monotony of the restaurants.”
“A few customers have mentioned that they are sick of seeing restaurants and bars,” says Boushey. “All you see are apples, apples, apples. I want to see oranges and pears.”
The concentration of bars and restaurants on the street also worries Somerset Ward councillor, Elisabeth Arnold.
“If you want people to come downtown you have to provide restaurants and other services,” she says.
Last year, Arnold was on an Elgin Street committee that proposed incentives to attract more retail stores on the street.
The committee disbanded with the creation of the new City of Ottawa.
But, Arnold says that drawing more retail stores to the street is still on the new city’s agenda.
But Gary Shaker, of Shaker Realty Ltd. says Elgin Street is a replica of what you would find in any city in North America.
“There’s always that one strip of restaurants and bars downtown that people tend to frequent. It’s important to remember that Elgin Street is in the core of the downtown area. It’s not like we’re in the suburbs,” he says.
He adds that, in the last few months, a few retail stores such as Venus and Mars, Pure Gelato, and Candy Mountain have appeared on the street.
But Wyatt Boyd, owner of Invisible Cinema, considers both Pure Gelato and Candy Mountain to be “in the food category.”
“They cater to the bar
crowd . . . people who go out for dinner and drinks and then decide to have dessert,” says Boyd.
“(Organised Sound and Invisible Cinema) were stores that served the neighbourhood. We also attracted a niche market so we were destination points; stores that people would drive out to,” he adds.
People need another reason other than food to come down to Elgin, says Bruno Racine, owner of The Hair Loft.
“When people drive down here, it’s because they are hungry. Few people come down for other reasons…we don’t get many tourists here because they go to the Byward Market,” says Racine.
According to Shaker, most landlords prefer leasing to restaurants because they get more rent than they would from a retail store.
That is because restaurants usually attract larger crowds and more business.
He adds that Elgin also attracts restaurants because of the existing restaurants on the street.
“A lot of the time, restaurants do better if they are clustered together because they attract more people,” says Shaker. “People can walk from place to place. If one restaurant is full, then they can walk to another.”
That’s why Ali Houribi chose Elgin Street as a location for his Shawarma King restaurant.
He has an establishment on Bank Street and says although the restaurant has been on the street for a short time, it’s a lot busier due to crowds drawn in by bars and restaurants.
And the over-abundance of restaurants has been good for some retail stores on the street.
“Restaurants are the reason we chose this location,” says Chantal Biro-Schad, co-owner of Schad, a clothing store. “We cater to 25 to 35 year olds. That’s our niche market. So, we went where our age-group hangs out.”
To make the most of the traffic on the street, her store stays open late in the summer.
“We’ve played around with the times to keep in line with the hours that bars keep,” she says . “We even tried to stay open until 11 p.m. but by that time people had a bit too much to drink, and we were afraid of getting lipstick on our clothes.”