Port Dalhousie Tim Hortons closing its doors
It was the coffee shop of choice for many people in Port Dalhousie.
But those loyal customers will have to find another place to enjoy a double-double and the company of friends.
A sign was posted last week in the windows of the Tim Hortons restaurant on Lakeport Road to inform customers that it will be closing its doors for good Oct. 29.
Bill McAvoy said he stops at that Tim Hortons every day.
“I’m really surprised that it’s closing because there always seems to be people,” he said while seated at a table outside the restaurant with his friend Ron Allen.
When events are held at nearby Henley Island, he said it’s packed.
McAvoy said he started visiting the Tim Hortons location years ago, when he and his wife would stop for a coffee and then walk along the waterfront on summer days. It became a part of his “daily routine” that he continued after his wife died.
Although there are “plenty of Tim Hortons in St. Catharines,” Allen said the Port Dalhousie location is unique.
“We have a park here you can sit in if the weather’s nice,” he said. “We’ve got the beach. It’s a really nice location.”
“It’s unfortunate. It really is,” McAvoy said, adding he suspects the lack of a drive-thru window might have contributed to the restaurant’s fate.
The franchise owner could not comment on the closure, and referred The Standard to an email address for media inquiries at the restaurant chain. There was no reply to an email sent to that address Wednesday afternoon regarding the reason for the closure or the number of employees who would be affected.
Allan Visser, whose company Visco Holdings owns the building where the restaurant is located, called it a sign of the times in a hamlet that has yet to recover after the Port Place condominium tower was approved, but was never constructed.
“Port Dalhousie has got a problem. I can probably give you the names of 40 businesses that went out of business in the last 15 years,” he said.
“Everything has been at a standstill.”
As a result of the 2012 demolition of area buildings such as Port Mansion to make way for a development that has yet to take place, Visser said “now there’s not enough mass of retailer business for people to want to come down there, and it isn’t really that pretty.”
Visser said his company is trying to find a new tenant for the Tim Hortons spot, with about a dozen leads on businesses that might be interested in moving in.
“But it has to be economically viable,” he said.