Pandemic has brought more churn to Bank Street
When Troubadour Books & Records and Hair Today Dye Tomorrow, two neighbouring Bank Street businesses, closed following their COVID -19 challenges, Jin Lee saw an opportunity.
“Both locations were hit hard by the pandemic. They had to close. But that's how we got in,” Lee says.
This year, he moved his 15-yearold grocery store, Arum Korean Market, and restaurant, Dolsot Cafe, exactly one block north on Bank Street to take over those smaller Centretown spaces.
In January, a more compact version of Arum opened where the bookstore had been. In June, Lee's new takeout-only restaurant, Go Gi Ya Sushi Poké, opened where the hair salon had been.
With the smaller footprints, Lee pays less rent.
He also spends less on staff and operating costs, and focuses more on online sales.
“That was a trend prior to pandemic,” Lee says. “After the pandemic, it's a must.”
Lee's relocation is part of the larger churn of businesses on Bank Street between Parliament Hill and the Queensway.
Coronavirus has slammed those businesses hard, especially on the north end of the street, as their prime customer base of office workers began working from home.
But Christine Leadman, executive director of the Bank Street Business Improvement Area, says that while closures have left more than a few properties vacant, new and relocated enterprises have taken their place as owners jockey for better visibility or cheaper rent.
Leadman, who has headed the BIA since 2013, says she hasn't yet tallied the businesses that have come and gone during the pandemic. But she says turnover has probably been slightly higher in the past year or so, “because those that were struggling to start with, they're going to be the first to go.”
The businesses that have closed include veterans such as the nearly six-decade-old Cue'n Cushion Billiards & Bar, Prospero The Book Company, Kiddytown, which sells clothing and items for children, and Connor's Gaelic Pub.
Two Starbucks locations have also been shuttered.
“There are some businesses that are very transient,” Leadman says. “They come in and the market's not there for them. You can almost predetermine that some things are going to survive and some things are not.”
Rhea Hymes closed her Kiddytown shop at 157 Bank St. as soon as the pandemic began, consolidating it into her Gladwin Crescent warehouse in Ottawa's east end. While Kiddytown's website says the Bank Street location is temporarily closed, Hymes, who owns the building, says the store, which dates back to roughly the early 1950s, won't ever reopen.
“It's a ghost town,” Hymes says of downtown. “No one's driving from suburbia to shop there and pay for parking. At three in the afternoon, you could roll a bowling ball down Laurier and you'd probably only hit the hotdog vendor.”
Even before the pandemic, the downtown core was dying, she adds.
Further south on Bank Street, Scott Heffernan closed Conner's Gaelic Pub in February this year after 15 years in business, keeping his 10-year-old Orléans location open.
“It was unsustainable. The writing was on the wall and I ran away. It absolutely tore my heart out,” Heffernan says. “I was missing a lot of people that would normally be in Centretown. They were actually at home in the suburbs,” he says.
His Orléans pub proved more viable because it did better selling food and alcohol to go during the pandemic.
A new pub, the Gilmour, opened in mid-June where the Connor's location had been. “I'm really, really, really cheering for the guy who took over in Centretown. But I have a bad feeling,” Heffernan says.
Nevertheless, some business owners have faith in Bank Street.
M.D. Alam, who opened the Etcetera Mart convenience store at 210 Bank St. just a month ago, says business is picking up.
“I looked at other locations a bit. I had an idea about Bank Street. It should be fine for business,” says Alam, who opened where a computer repair store had been until earlier this year.
The BIA's Leadman says that car and foot traffic in her area is slowly starting to grow after dropping by 50 to 60 per cent during the pandemic.
She said she hopes the increase in vaccinated people and assurances from businesses that they are taking pandemic safety seriously will lure customers back.
On the other hand, “all the talk about the (Delta) variant can dissuade people from going out,” she says.
Anthony Bailey moved Toro Taqueria from Slater Street to 139 Bank St. into his Morning Owl coffee shop, which he closed.
“We realized pretty quickly that the pandemic was going to hurt us. We realized we couldn't carry two businesses at the same time,” Bailey says.
Toro, which opened in 2017, was a hit at lunch time with office workers, Bailey says. But business has dropped 90 per cent, down from 150 people daily to 15 or 16, he says.
“The only reason we're here is because of the (government) subsidies,” he says.
Leadman says her BIA hired a grant writer to help businesses such as Bailey's apply for support. The result, she says, was almost $500,000 in subsidies to help keep roughly three dozen Bank Street businesses afloat.
Dentist Katia Doumit said she hopes that her dentistry practice will prosper in its new location at 137 Bank St., where Rings Etc. Jewelers had been.
After two decades inside the L'Esplanade Laurier mall, Doumit opened the Urban Dental Centre in January, completing plans that began before the pandemic.
Those plans involved buying her 150-year-old heritage building in 2018 from the jeweller, who was a patient of hers, she says.
“It's my dream practice. This was done by passion and love,” Doumit says of the move.
The new location involved extensive renovations that drew lessons from the pandemic. For example, improving the ventilation system so that the air is hospital-grade. “I went to the maximum safety for me and everyone,” Doumit says.
While her patients tended to be downtown workers who lived elsewhere, most of them continue to have her care for their teeth despite working from home, Doumit says.
“It touched me very deep in my heart to see people coming from driving an hour-and-a-half,” she says.
Doumit says she's trying to remain optimistic.
“When hard times kick in, I'm not someone who worries,” she says. “I do what I can do and let the other things settle. I know that strong people will get through it, and that's the type of person I am.”
In Ottawa, there is no real difference between federal and local. For us, federal is local. DENNIS VAN STAALDUINEN, executive director of the Wellington West Business Improvement Area