Maximes Closing in 2025

A long time restaurant in St. Vital along St. Mary's, it has been described as fine dining that your parents loved. Reports all this week is that it will be closing in two weeks and that the property has been sold.

The restaurant has been owned by the Bekios family since 1984. George Bekios passed away in 2024 leaving his two daughters to run the place. Like many Greek owned restaurants, it comes down to no one left in the family to run it for years to come when everyone is near retirement or the founding member passes it away.

St. Mary's is a valuable piece of real estate and it is not surprising a buyer has been found. No word on what the new business might be.

This comes on the heels of another business in a different field closing. Croft Music, after a 110 year in the music industry is closing. Violins by Anton will continue in the same spot on Henderson Highway. A differed type of business than Croft's but related. It will be by appointment only.

There has been an uptick in the last year of business retirements and some locations have turned into hot commodities. Retail sales have been up, restaurants have found growth in breakfasts. Were it not for tariffs, Canada might be even better positioned for growth. As it is. we will have to see some innovation as one generation hands over business to the next generation.

Long and McQuade to Move to Polo Park Area

 

Long and McQuade, a Canadian national music store, started off pretty small for its Winnipeg location. They were the third location in Canada to open in 1971 and took over Winnipeg Piano, a city institution on Portage. Business boomed at Long and McQuade moved to Osborne the following year. By 1978, they had moved to Corydon.

My impression of Corydon was that it wasn't a big store but I was not sure how deep the store went or if it included a basement. One thing is clear is that the move to Stafford was one of constant expansion as they took over large swaths of the old Videon building in 1997 until there was little left that they didn't operate from. The move to Pembina Highway was a purpose-built store of 25,000 square feet in 2016. 

There are three locations in the city now at Wall Street, Henderson Highway and Pembina Highway. It is the Wall Street location that is moving to Polo Park because there is very little room to expand at their present location. At one point there was a very music shops all along Portage and Wall Street but pretty much the only one left is St. John's Music. The Pembina location boasted it had the largest curved wall of guitars in the world. At 400 guitars, they might be right.

The old Wall Street location used to be Gorden Price/Mother's Music and became a Long and McQuade in 1993 and full renovation in 2014. Mother's Music used to be right across from University of Winnipeg in the 1980s.

The Henderson Highway location is fairly new at 2019. It was a former location of River City Sports. Henderson Highway is filled with music stores.

The location for the relocated Wall Street/Polo Park location is on Ellice just east of Empress Street. It is a multi-million purchase of the whole 9 acres and 120,000 square foot building where Long and McQuade will occupy 50,000 square feet of what is presently Bianca Amor's Liquidation Supercentre.

In 2007, the whole complex was purchased by Cabela from Sidney I. Robinson who used to operate S.I.R. Warehouse, a business not dissimilar to Cabela's. Prior to that, the building was used by MTS for their fleet vehicles. 

Much of the area around Polo Park was industrial right up to the 1980s.

For those wondering what happens to Bianca Amor's, it has found a smaller spot on St. James.

The new Long and McQuade's is modelled after Halifax and Calgary which feature a store and distribution centre. The company has quite a bit of product going from place to place and at 50,000 square feet of space, the new Polo Park location can handle that.

This is a massive investment in the city and evidence that music lessons and musical instruments are big business. There isn't a company that I know of quite as coast to coast in their field as Long and McQuade.  An employee increase for the people hired for the distribution centre and for music lessons is guaranteed. Total numbers are not known. And of course, the construction and millions spent will help the economy here in 2024.

Four Safeways to be Converted to Freshcos

The Safeway at McGillivary and Pembina last Thursday on one of my last walks. It will be the site of one of the four new Freshcos.

Some time ago I reported that Safeway/Sobeys was going to be converting stores into Freshcos. So far Winnipeg has two which are operated as franchises at Regent and Lagiomediere and at Jefferson and McPhillips.

Aside from the Pembina location, the other three Freshcos will be Safeways at Niakwa Village and on Sargent that will be converted to Freshcos and a former location at Bronx and Henderson that has stood empty since 2015 will be renovated and also be a Freshco but not till 2021.

All Freshcos will have pharmacies and be locally owned. The re-opening of the Bronx and Henderson location will create 100 new jobs while 100 jobs will be retained with the other stores.

There were far too many Safeway/Sobeys when the merger took place. Even when the combined company was forced to sell four stores by the federal government they still have stores across the street from one another operating under the same flyer and the same corporate policy. It made the overall company vulnerable to new competitors.

The benefits of local ownership have been demonstrated often by having Food Fare, No Frills and others here. They choose to sponsor different things, give chance to other products and more keyed in to local needs.

Obviously some union people will be affected. They will lose their jobs with the corporation and I'm assuming will be re-hired by the franchise owner. This could be a good thing or a bad thing depending on wage or working conditions. It will depend on the person. However, in the end there will be more jobs to be had that what existed before.

In all, some great news and for Winnipeg consumers, it could mean better prices overall for groceries.

McIvor Mall Henderson Highway

Is there life for an old mall? The answer is yes. We have seen rejuvenation for Northgate, Grant Park, Charleswood and biggest turnaround Unicity over a number of years. McIvor Mall, built in 1980, had been a less glamorous mall than River East to the south on Henderson.

The mall had a Marketplace Co-op grocer, a restaurant, Blaine's Books and served its local community. Over the years though this has not been enough and a number of businesses have closed and the mall, like the fore mentioned, needed a re-fresh.

Sadly, Blaine's won't be part of it as he will retire after outlasting every other music retailer out there except Sunshine Records.

The most important part of of the rejuvenation of McIvor Mall is that a No Frills store will be an anchor. The Loblaw's franchise are independently owned grocers with supply agreement from the company. In some ways this might be better than what was there before because a local owner might have his finger on the pulse of the neighbourhood a lot better.

A Rexall pharmacy anchors the other side which is good since every community needs a drug store. Inside the mall so far are services, dry cleaner, Pizza Hotline, Subway, a fitness center and some restaurants. It will be the other shops that set up that will that distinguish it as a success or not but a good grocer goes a long way. There will also be a roadside restaurant which could be a keep to the mall's future success.

So many stores have closed lately but some places that have a combination of staples and local attractions will still bring people in.

Long and McQuade Coming to Henderson Highway

There are two streets in Winnipeg that are known for a number of music related businesses along them, some in close proximity. Quest Music, St. John's Music and Long and McQuade are all along Portage Avenue or just off of it. There used to be three more stores as well but the market is tough, especially for piano sales.

Another road that has an abundance of music related businesses is Henderson Highway. It is there that you will find Croft Music and Mar Schells Music in terms of instrument sales.

Now we learn that Canada's biggest music seller is adding heft to Henderson Highway. Presently cladding is up around the former location of River City Sports. The sports equipment retailer that once had multiple locations in the city has consolidated at their St. James location across from Polo Park. Founded in 1991, it may have expanded too fast and their location at Seasons of Tuxedo probably was a bridge too far.

The building at 1074 Henderson Highway has Akman Construction busy gutting and re-building the 10,000 square feet inside. The exterior will be getting a new glazing replacement with the famous colours of Long and McQuade. 

The store itself will be very open in concept and concentrate on sales, rentals, lessons and repairs. The basement will be staff related and repair related.

Henderson Highway has quite the mix of businesses along it despite how busy it can get. In that way it is like portions of Portage Avenue with right to the curb businesses.

Long and McQuade has had many locations and now multiple ones in recent years but Henderson Highway might be its most intimate street location in the city.