Naturally Good - Tara
I went downtown to buy stationery and mail a letter the other day.
Once upon a time you could go to Mills Office Supplies at Bagot and Brock (now an army recruiting outfit) before you did your post office business. No more. Now there’s no competition in the office supply racket, so I have to go to Staples – aka the Business Despot. They have greeters, just like Wal-Mart. Corporate concentration spawns homogenization.
But I suppose that we should count ourselves as lucky that this big box category killer (you can get bottled water at Staples) located downtown. Otherwise, where would we go for printer paper, stickies and the like?
After Staples, I rolled over to post office. What used to be called the Dominion Public Building in many a town is a monument to modernism here. It has a bright, airy space where you buy stamps and get parcels weighed. The ceiling is lofty. The staff are friendly. The place even smells good. Papery.
Then I headed down Princess Street and left my bike on the shady south side just below Wellington, across from Wayfarer Books. And because anxious debates about the future of downtown are much on the public mind, I paused to take a look across the street at the buildings on either side of Wayfarer.
To the east is Tara Foods, a vital downtown destination store employing some twenty people. The retail/wholesale business has a homespun feel. The building’s façade is impressive, freshly painted and inviting. It features upstairs apartments under a metal roof, the new dormers added when the store moved from King Street back in the late 1990s. The green awning creeps out automatically, according to the sun’s position.
Then, two doors up the street, is the Sleepless Goat. “The Goat” is a worker co-op, a funky spot unique to Kingston – like Brian’s Record Option up the street. The Goat has no greeters, no hostess. But it is always packed with the young people that the local economic development people insist that we need to attract and retain.
When I stood looking at The Goat, I was amazed – but not surprised — by the difference between its building and the one housing Tara Foods.
The Goat is housed in a three storey Victorian structure that is in need of work. The apartments above the café have decaying aluminum windows that I suspect help to heat the outdoors in winter. The street door leading upstairs is surrounded by faded metal cladding stained with rust. Paint is peeling from chipped bricks. The mortar is crumbling. There’s no apparent sign that the building’s owner has recently invested much of the $64,800 in rent collected annually from the Goat.
Tara’s spiffy building is owned by the fellow who runs Tara, German immigrant Rudi Mogl, who came here thirty years back. He clearly brings a sense of pride to his downtown property. The Goat’s scabrous building is owned by the Springer interests.
Martha Rudden
July 4, 2010
It is funny how different owners approach their buildings. Makes me wonder sometimes about why they do what they do. Is it for sheer pride of ownership, and out of a sense of good community-spirit, like Rudi. Or is it to win heritage awards? It just doesn’t make sense to leave so many places in such a slovenly state.
Cheryl Layng
July 30, 2010
I got to the part that says “$64,000 in rent collected annually” and haven’t recovered sufficiently to leave a coherent comment.