With the announcement of the Trader’s Joes grocery store chain coming to St. Petersburg, businesses near Fourth Street N. and 28th Avenue N.were forced to relocate. The Crow’s Nest checked up with Ringside Café, Casita Taqueria and Classy Closet to see how they’re taking the move.
Back in the ring: When the news came, he felt his stomach turn.
Last September, Greg Pugh, 22-year owner of local restaurant and music venue Ringside Café, was told by a reliable source that the Fourth Street property where his business stood would be sold to make way for a Trader Joe’s grocery store.
Three weeks later, property owner Chuck Ross confirmed it.
“It was like getting a pink slip,” said Pugh, who had such a long history with the building and the Fourth Street community.
In late October, Trader Joes confirmed plans to build a store on the site.
Pugh, originally from California, moved to St. Petersburg with his wife Kelly after arranging to buy Ringside from the first owner, who had just recently turned it into a music venue and restaurant.
When Pugh bought the business, he quickly made changes, revamping the menu and changing the Friday/Saturday music schedule to seven nights a week.
“Believe me there were some times I questioned doing that, but we thought there was an awful lot of fantastic talent,” Pugh said. “And we also just felt we needed to be consistent. If people wanted that environment, they should be able to get it every night.”
Back then, Ringside was almost exclusively a blues venue. In fact, Pugh said their tagline was “Home of the Blues” long before House of Blues was around.
But Pugh said Ringside’s history has been one of evolving with its home city, and changes were coming.
“For years, Fourth Street was the place to be,” Pugh said. “At night time there really wasn’t much going on downtown, and we were one of few places to go for a while.”
Pugh said with restaurants like Harvey’s, Babalu and Pepin, St. Petersburg was a string of mainstays, and “wasn’t nearly as transient” as it is today.
“You could see that downtown was starting to become a really hot environment. But it wasn’t like a light switch that went off, it was a slow evolution,” Pugh said. “Demographically the age was slowly lowering, it was coming around. Things started changing. It feels like we were a part of that, in some ways.”
Sensing the changing time and place, Pugh and his manager, Mitch Gray, decided to change the tagline to “Home of Rock and Blues” around 10 years ago.
“We mix it up quite a bit now. My manager Mitch Gray has been with me the whole time and he works very hard … he is genuinely concerned about what people like and enjoy, and he works hard at developing a relationship with the bands,” Pugh said.
Pugh said he and Gray have never felt threatened as St. Petersburg continues to grow because it has retained a “small town flavor.”
“We’re still a small city and have kept that environment,” Pugh said. “There are plenty of us small businesses around. We’ve been fortunate in St. Pete to have the support of the local community, the friendship and the devotion.”
Pugh’s trust in the community was put to its greatest test yet when he found out Ringside would have to find a new home at the end of last year.
He said that for his regulars, the hardest part of the move was separating Ringside from a building with so much history. Built in 1912, the structure was originally a two-story apartment and then an amateur boxing club — thus the boxing motif that is still a part of the venue today.
Pugh said he was feeling pretty dejected when a local eye surgeon and regular at Ringside came up to him one night and said, “Don’t get down. We need a place like Ringside in St Pete. And people know that.”
“I said to him, ‘You don’t know how much better I feel now,’” Pugh said.
Not long into his search for a new location, the plight of Ringside caught the attention of local business owner Jeff Knight. He invited Pugh and his employees to move Ringside to what was then the newly renovated Club Detroit at 16 2nd St. N — right in the heart of downtown.
“Jeff greeted us with open arms and presented us with an opportunity that I don’t think we could have come close to anywhere,” Pugh said. “We didn’t have to reinvent the wheel, we just had to bring what we had on Fourth Street to downtown … and we would be offering the exact same thing in a better environment, with better sound and more national acts.”
Pugh said the transition has been an interesting one for him, the employees and the clientele.
In regards to any blame that has been placed on the property owner, Pugh said, “You can’t say anything negative. There’s no bad person here. It’s just life.”
The only major change at the new Ringside is the menu. The Club Detroit location did not have a kitchen, so Knight arranged for Ringside to share a kitchen with Calypso, a connected restaurant that he also recently bought.
Pugh said on day one at the new location, they started to see regulars show up, as well as new faces. The feedback has been great so far.
“People do rise to the occasion,” Pugh said. “There’s a whole energy down there that’s not on Fourth Street that’s exciting. It’s a destination.”
“I visited the new Ringside today, I was very impressed with the new digs,” said Steve Holcombe in a comment on Ringside’s Facebook page. “This will become a nice rebranding of what’s become a legendary place for musicians here in the bay area.”
On Saturday, local band Pitbull Toddler played to a full house.
A manikin of the trademark Ringside boxer looked down on the crowd from a ledge below the second floor balcony, the glow of stage lights reflecting in its eyes.
“Bricks and mortar come and go, but the personalities, the music, survive,” Pugh said. # Ryan Ballogg, Staff Reporter
New casa for the Casita: Mexican restaurant Casita Taqueria sold beer and tacos for $2.50 on Jan. 11, its last day on Fourth Street. More than a month later, and the beloved taco joint has yet to reopen.
“We’re getting there slowly,” said Don Arvin, who owns the restaurant with his wife Gwen.
He explained they initially experienced trouble getting the proper construction permits for renovation at the restaurant’s new Grand Central District home, an old gas station at 2663 Central Ave.
But now, Arvin said they are in full swing, remodeling the building and updating plumbing and electricity. He hopes they’ll be open by the end of February.
“We’re excited,” Arvin said. “The residents of Kenwood seem awesome and all of the Grand Central people have already reached out to us.”
Despite having some work to do, Arvin believes they’ll be able to recreate the eclectic feel of the restaurant’s formerly cozy and colorful structure.
On Feb. 6, the Arvins took to the Casita Taqueria Facebook page to reassure anxious customers they wouldn’t be taco-less for much longer.
“After a slow start and some unexpected hiccups we’re finally at full speed! May not look like it yet but we’re getting there! Shooting for the end of this month! We miss you all :),” they wrote. –– Tyler Killette, Staff Reporter
Boutique owners stay classy: Janette and Alexandria Ohanian, mother-daughter owners of consignment boutique Classy Closet, were surprised when reporters from the Tampa Bay Times asked for an interview regarding rumors that a Trader Joe’s would be occupying their location by the end of 2014.
“We were given a letter telling us we had 60 days to relocate,” Janette Ohanian recalls. The letter was not from the City of St. Petersburg, but from landlord Charles Ross, a local attorney who, as Ohanian was told, sold the property occupied by Classy Closet and other businesses on the block for a large sum.
“There are 13 grocery stores in a mile radius already,” Ohanian said. “The city could have done something … Why build another one?”
She mentioned that neither she nor any of the other businesses occupying the block were offered financial assistance or reimbursement for the move, from the landlord or from the city. Only one business, a barber shop, closed for good.
Despite inconvenience, Ohanian said the forced relocation was a “blessing in disguise.”
“As well as I thought I was doing over there (at the Fourth Street location), I’ve quadrupled my sales,” she said.
Ohanian has seen returning customers and new customers, bringing new items and a wider variety of inventory to the new 540 Central Ave. storefront.
Though an unexpectedly lucrative venture, Trader Joe’s is still a sore subject for Ohanian.
“It made me brave,” she said. “But needless to say, I won’t walk into that shop.”
A bittersweet goodbye: Residents in one of the three homes behind the property, which will also be demolished to make room for the new grocer, supported Ross’s decision to sell after he was reportedly approached by the company.
“It’s his retirement and investment money,” said Lauren Martin, relative of Ross and former resident of the block. “He bought the property with retirement in mind.”
She acknowledged the sale won’t be an easy band-aid to peel off.
“It’s bittersweet [for him] to see Ringside go. He met his wife there … He even fought to save the oak trees on the property.” # Raven Rayne Martinez, Crow’s Nest Correspondent
