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Jenna Mooers, owner of EDNA on Gottingen Street, sits on one of the benches outside the restaurant. “I would see a Starbucks moving in as somebody who is going to open something in this community and take something out of this community,” she says.
It’s not business as usual on Gottingen
New crop of entrepreneurs hope to help bring positive change
You’d think business owners wouldn’t want to encourage loitering on Gottingen Street. But Jenna Mooers doesn’t mind random people gathering outside her upscale restaurant, EDNA.
In fact, she put a pair of benches in front of the place so they can do just that.
“Within two minutes, there were people sitting on them,” says Mooers, who opened the restaurant this spring on a stretch that houses modern condo buildings and the Salvation Army. “There’s almost always someone sitting on those benches out front, and I just thought it was kind of fascinating.”
Mooers is part of a new crop of business owners aiming to attract higher-end clientele to the street, while remaining in tune with its community. These north end entrepreneurs say the area’s development doesn’t have to spell gentrification.
Business and community: a delicate balance
While it is exciting to see entrepreneurs setting up on Gottingen, says Michelle Strum, chairperson of the North End Business Association, there need to be connections between them and longtime residents. Strum encourages newcomers – both business owners and residents – to get to know the street and get involved in local or volunteer organizations.
“We need more jobs and we need a thriving economy in the area – that’s what we want to achieve, but we don’t want to do that by pushing out other people,” says Strum, who owns Gottingen’s Alteregos Café and Catering and the Halifax Backpackers Hostel.
Strum, who hires her own staff from Uniacke Square, the public housing complex on the street, says businesses can bring jobs and skill-building opportunities to the local community.
“As long as these businesses come in and that wealth is redistributed throughout the community, then it’s great.”
Living, working and spending in the north end
Mooers, whose childhood home was about five blocks from EDNA on northern Gottingen Street, says the opportunity to open a restaurant there brought her back from Montreal, where she had been studying and working for several years.
“It used to be a very vibrant commercial district in the ’20s and ’30s and ’40s, so I think a bit of inspiration came from that as well, seeing what it once was and imagining what it could be.”
She says the new businesses coming to the street will add to the sense of community by encouraging people to walk and spend time in the neighbourhood.
“I would see a Starbucks moving in as somebody who is going to open something in this community and take something out of this community,” says Mooers, pointing out that she lives in the area, spends money and pays taxes there. “I would call that more gentrification than small business owners doing their thing.”
Notes from Field Guide
It’s a sentiment echoed by Dan Vorstermans and Ceilidh Sutherland, the couple behind Field Guide, a restaurant specializing in high-quality local fare that’s opening this fall just up the street from EDNA. Sutherland and Vorstermans are also north end residents who love the area and wanted to work in it.
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Ceilidh Sutherland and Dan Vorstermans stand outside the doorway of Field Guide restaurant, which they hope to open in early November.
“The week we signed our lease, there was an article in the Coast about people being pushed out of the north end,” Sutherland says. “It’s kind of sad when you read that because we really do feel like we are doing something good.”
They’ve discussed how their business can help support the community – particularly in a food-related way – but also have a lot on their plates in terms of getting it off the ground. “We’ll get there,” Sutherland says.
From Vorsterman’s point of view, the development on the street is bringing more diversity, which is one of the keys to its future.
“There needs to be people making money in a neighbourhood and people spending money in a neighbourhood for anything to survive.”
Social juxtaposition isn’t necessarily new to the area, he says. “Walk around the north end, there’s a lot of people with money that already live here.”
At the same time, they hope to see the area develop proportionally, with room for both affordable housing and pricier condos.
Old, new, high, low
Gottingen Street is a study in contrasts in terms of old and new, high end and low end. And Strum says there is a feeling of division on the street, in that longtime residents stick to one end while condo-dwelling folks stick to the other, reluctant to cross north of Cornwallis. The sides can co-exist, she says, if people keep an open mind and let go of expectations about what it should be.
“Instead of seeing something as, ‘I wish that street was cleaner,’ ” Strum says, “look at what exists here that you don’t find in other places – or grab a broom and sweep the street, because that’s the community vibe that exists here.”
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Mark Pavlovski and Katie Roux will be opening their café/bar The Nook on Gottingen, in the commercial space under the Theatre Lofts, in the coming weeks.
That vibe may be overshadowed by the street’s reputation for crime. In early October, there was a shooting outside Uniacke Square. In September, there was a stabbing on the sidewalk near Big Al’s Pizza.
But the safety stigma is changing and based more on the past than current reality, says Mark Pavlovski, who is opening a café/bar called The Nook on Gottingen with partner Katie Roux later this fall.
Since they started renovating the café, located on the street level of the Theatre Lofts building, Pavlovski says people ranging from condo dwellers to “random people off the street” have popped in to ask what they’re up to.
Yes, the street has its characters
“Every day we keep our door open and we have curious characters stopping by, and there’s nothing else but curiosity,” Pavlovski says. “They’re just characters and I never feel in danger.”
Having grown up in St. Petersburg, Russia, Pavlovski says it’s normal for cities to draw a mix of people. “People yell on the street sometimes,” he said, “but Halifax is a very sheltered place.”
The fact that development is bringing more people out onto Gottingen Street, Roux says, will help discourage crime and concerns about safety.
“I think the fact that big businesses like Global News, for example, are here and a lot of people are developing these condos, I think it’s an indication that things are changing,” Pavlovski says.
Yes, things are changing, Strum says, but she thinks of it as re-population rather than revitalization – the buzzword many are using.
She says it’s taken her the 10 years she’s been on Gottingen to fully understand its history, conflicts and hidden gems. From her point of view, it’s a place where people say hello as they walk by, sell art on the street, help lost visitors find their way, and get “dressed to the nines” on Sunday to go to church.
“The area,” Strum says, “has been vital for many years.”
Credits: Story by Jessica Howard, video by Shawn Thompson and Jessica Howard.
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