Marlon the Butcher, Digsville and other store closings at Yonge and Eglinton

I was at dinner with a friend who lives in the area (Vita Sociale if you’re interested) and we ended up talking about the strange state of retail in the area. It turns out I’m not the only one who is confused about what works and what doesn’t work here.

This confusion continues with the latest round of businesses shutting down. On my weekly walks up Yonge Street, I saw that Marlon’s has closed. For those that remember, Marlon’s used to be The Butchers and was the guy who caused a great deal of confusion and annoyance on Web Piggy.

A few years ago, he offered a voucher where you could spend $100 and redeem it for $400 worth of meat. People scrambled to buy the voucher but Marlon couldn’t keep up with the supply and it got very ugly. (Read the comments in this BlogTO post. I have no idea if the math is correct, so grain of salt, people.)

But now Marlon’s is closed which means that locals will have to get their meat at Rowe’s or go south of Eglinton to the Butcher’s Son.

Digsville, a store that catered towards dogs is also gone.

I think it faced competition from the pet store two doors north of it due to size (bigger) and prices (cheaper, probably).

Finally, could RioCan be building condos in this building instead of tearing it down and putting up a glass thing?

I’m tempted to say yes for a couple of reasons: there is no development/amendment notice on the building. All the other retail tenants have left but TD Canada Trust is still there. Also, I peeked into the windows and on the draft board was the building, not a design of a new, shinier building.

Whether this area needs more condos (I say no because we just don’t have the infrastructure and so many condos are already being planned for here.) or not, I find I don’t mind the idea of building condos within the building. It’s an attractive building that needs a bit of TLC and it will continue to add interest to the neighbourhood instead of those boring (read cheap) glass towers.

 Oh, we’re getting a Virgin Mobile store but that’s boring.