This 30-year-old garage is now locked and abandoned, and will be replaced by a condo complex.
Plans to build a 121-unit condo complex on the corner of Kent Street and Gladstone Avenue are filling local business owners with hope, but also some concern.
Mike Yadi, owner of Mike’s Gladstone Auto Repair across the street from the condo site, is optimistic about the new development.
He says it will bring more residents to the area, which should boost his business and others surrounding it.
“It’s going to be good for business. More people means more business,” he says.
However, Yadi says property rental prices have risen over the past few years. This makes the area more desirable for large-scale development and less favourable to small businesses that have to rent properties.
The condo site’s former occupant, a gas station and auto repair service called Main Garage Ltd., has moved to 1049 Merivale Rd.
All that remains at 435 Gladstone Ave. is a hollowed-out and peeling old building, with boards over broken windows and garbage on the floor.
Next to the old garage, the Centropolis Condos sales office sports a billboard with a picture of the ultramodern residential complex to be built there. It is, literally, a sign of things to come.
But a broken window and spray-painted vulgarities on the sales office are reminders that the neighborhood has its rough side.
The area is no longer a hub of prostitution, as it used to be, says local tailor Mario LaRiccia, but it still has its warts.
Gladstone Avenue is peppered with auto sale, rental and repair shops.
But according to Carm Savasta, owner of Savasta Auto Repair, these kinds of stores are dwindling.
“There used to be a lot more auto repair shops downtown. Slowly, they’re being moved or going out of business,” he says.
Savasta says the closing of Main Garage Ltd. has increased his own garage’s business.
“Right now, because some of our competition has left, I’ve noticed an increase in our number of customers.”
According to Savasta, no developers have attempted to buy his property yet.
But he says it is right next-door to the former Main Garage Ltd. and could attract offers.
“The trend is going that way,” he says.
“I think if someone approached me and gave me a decent price, I would sell and retire. After being here for 30 years, I don’t think I would move to a new location.”
Business owners outside the auto repair sector say that although an influx of new residents could increase their sales, new condos could have largely unforeseen and undesirable long-term consequences for small businesses and people who frequent them.
Tom Stewart, co-owner of SpaceMan Music, says he is worried about what he calls “Westboro syndrome” (an increase in rents in a growing residential area) taking hold in Centretown.
“The biggest negative effect it could have on us is if our rent goes up significantly,” he says.
“In Westboro, a popular area, there used to be all kinds of coffee shops and music shops and galleries – that’s the reason people wanted to live down there."
"Then the value of the property and the rents went up so much that all those businesses closed."
"This is how cool neighbourhoods become gentrified and boring," he says.