ST PAUL, Minn. — On the east end of Grand Avenue, one longtime restaurant is celebrating the end of an era, while two others are saying hello again.
Loyal customers have been flocking to Tavern on Grand since the middle of January when the walleye-centric restaurant announced that it is planning to close in June.
"It's sad, really sad," said Beverly Brending, owner of Brending Electrolysis just a few blocks down from Tavern on Grand. "A lot of people have come here for many years."
Those loyal customers, along with a lot of long-time staff members, prompted the family behind the restaurant to plan Tavern on Grand's extended goodbye.
"We kind of sat down as a family and said we would rather end this on a high note rather than turn it into a grind that we hate showing up to every morning," said general manager Eric LeMay.
Both Eric and his sister Tara Padilla, who manages the front of the house, say rising costs, falling foot traffic and an expiring lease factored into their decision to close, but they say the death of their mother, Mary - who passed away last year after running the restaurant for more than 20 years - is what really changed their perspective.
"For me personally, it's not sustainable to do school, home and family life and then the extended-family (restaurant) life also," Padilla said. "Even if the rent was free, if we didn't have to pay taxes - in my opinion - I would be ready to move to my family's next chapter."
But as Tavern on Grand gets ready to turn the page, many are wondering what that will mean for the next chapter of Grand Avenue.
"I just think we're in a time of change," Brending said.
For evidence of that, all you have to do is look across the street at the recently re-opened Saji-Ya and Emmett's Public House next door.
"I've seen the neighborhood through all kinds of phases," said Pat Kallemeyn, General Manager of Saji-Ya Sushi & Japanese Kitchen since 1987. "At this point, there's a lot of stuff coming and going, but I think more stuff is coming."
Kallemeyn and John Wolf, general manager of Emmett's Public House, have both spent decades running restaurants on Grand Avenue. In 2021, they both closed during construction of the Kenton House Condo building, but neither one hesitated to return once the new building opened late last year.
"We came back and we're invigorated," Wolf said. "We're excited. We brought a lot of the old bar with us but we're also looking forward to the future."
The Grand Avenue Business Association(GABA) says the same can be said throughout the nearly three-mile corridor. Despite the high-profile closures of Tavern on Grand and Salut, along with losses of several large national retailers like Pottery Barn and Lululemon, according to GABA 11 new businesses have opened on Grand in the last year, with nearly half of them being restaurants.
"We've found that the foot traffic is still here and the commitment to the avenue is certainly here," Wolf said.
"When we first opened we were just open for dinners because of staffing and just getting all the parts running," Kallemeyn said. "You'd just watch people go by and they'd come up and tug on the door and we were like, we've got to get lunches going. So we just pushed forward and we got Thursday, Friday and Saturday lunches going."
That's welcome news for Tavern on Grand, which has had more business than it can handle since the announcement.
"Friday we broke a sales record and then we re-broke it on Saturday," Padilla said. "I had phone calls from Texas, people are planning trips to come back."
"It absolutely makes you emotional to see the effect that we've had on people," LeMay said. "Part of my soul is here on Grand Avenue, and it always will be. I think Grand Avenue is going to be fine."
"I see the change that's been happening as that next phase of what Grand Avenue is," Padilla added.
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