Downtown restaurant The Tartan Table has closed. (Alison Sandstrom/paNOW Staff)

By Alison Sandstrom

COVID-19

Pandemic particularly hard for downtown businesses

Apr 2, 2020 | 1:57 PM

In what may have been one of the first business casualties of COVID-19 in P.A., Central Avenue restaurant The Tartan Table appears to have closed for good.

Carolyn Carleton, executive director of the Downtown Business Improvement District, told paNOW her members are being particularly hard hit by the pandemic.

“They’re mostly all local families,” she explained. “They don’t have a big corporation behind them that will help them.”

She added with the government-ordered shuttering of non-essential businesses and stores, the pivot to online has also been difficult.

Fire response

Fire at Candle Lake Golf Course

4h ago

Honouring a neighbour

'He's smiling down at us': Wes Petterson Memorial Park opens in Weldon with special ceremony

Sep 22, 2024

Community events

Sunday's annual Walk for Veterans in P.A. to be only one in Saskatchewan

Sep 21, 2024

“A lot of the downtown businesses were structured on customer service,” Carleton said. “Of knowing your name when you walked in the door, creating that relationship with the store owner and the shoppers and that’s difficult in an online world.”

Still Carleton said she’s encouraging members to use this forced down time to accomplish things they’ve been putting off because they’re usually too busy.

“When we are able to open and function again, we’re going to be better because we’ve taken this time to build into ourselves and our businesses,” she said. “We’re planning a big relaunching of the downtown businesses once we get through all of this safely as a community.”

At time of publication, a representative from the Tartan Table did not respond to a request for comment.

–

alison.sandstrom@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @alisandstrom