The Honest Lawyer, one of Windsor’s longest-running and most successful downtown watering holes, has turned off its beer taps for good.
The Ouellette Avenue bar/restaurant — which catered to business as well as college types and offered not only a range of arcade games but the only bowling lane downtown — held its last wingding Sunday night. Work crews were already hauling out gear Monday afternoon.
The Honest Lawyer’s demise is the latest in a string of bar closings in Windsor’s core over the last year. Chatham Street has been particularly hard hit, with the loss of: the Chatham Street Grill, the City Beer Market, Koko Pellies, the Pitt for Pasta and the Pour House.
But Larry Horwitz, chairman of the Downtown Windsor Business Improvement Association, says the closings are not part of a trend but just a natural ebb and flow of entertainment-area business.
“It’s sad to see the Honest Lawyer close, since it was such a great restaurant and bar. It was a fun place to go,” Horwitz said. “But that’s how it works downtown: old businesses are replaced by new ones.”
Horwitz notes that Ristorante Famoso’s has opened on Chatham Street, a Polish restaurant and a Vietnamese restaurant on Pelissier, and that other bars and eateries are in the works elsewhere.
“I’m very positive about downtown,” Horwitz said. “I think there’s going to be a lot of diversity and change downtown. I’ve seen more openings than closings.”
Horwitz said the increasing academic influence downtown, thanks to the growing campuses of the University of Windsor and St. Clair College, are part of a shift. Even with the once-vibrant Chatham Street, which will soon have a new medical centre, Horwitz remains hopeful.
“People don’t buy properties to keep them vacant,” said Horwitz, referring to an out-of-town buyer who recently snatched up some Chatham Street businesses. “I might be the eternal optimist, but I tend to think they’re going to fill up.”
The Honest Lawyer’s Toronto-based owner Greg Sandwell did not return calls or emails from The Star Monday. But the Honest Lawyer, which opened a half flight below street level in 1998, became a Windsor success story, blossoming into a chain with outlets in London, Hamilton, Whitby, Richmond Hill and Ottawa.
David Mady, president of the Mady Development Corporation that owns the 55,000-square-foot complex which housed the Honest Lawyer, also feels confident that new tenants will come. He acknowledges, however, that business sometimes can be tricky in the city core.
“People aren’t kicking the doors down, per se, right now,” Mady said. “But we have a wonderful asset, strategically located at Main and Main, with The Windsor Star as our anchor. And we’ll be welcoming the Windsor Family Credit Union (replacing CTV, which is moving to a Bell-owned building on Goyeau Street) in the new year.”
Mady expressed confidence that tenants will soon move into the almost 10,000-square-foot space being vacated by the Honest Lawyer and the almost 4,000-square-foot space vacated in the summer by the Snooty Rooster restaurant.
“We’ve owned that building for 25 years,” he said. “I know we’ll get tenants. I don’t know if it will be tomorrow. I’m being selective. But we have a wonderful-looking asset and I know tenants will come.
“That’s what I do for a living.”
