First the bad news.
Cafe Azul was evicted from Riverdale Park Station.
This is the first and only retail location in Riverdale Park Station to close.
They had issues paying rent and all their stuff was actually put out in the street on 11/14/2023
Also Le Fantome has been struggling mostly due to issues with management.
They have went through 4 different ordering systems in just over the first year it has been opened and during each conversion ordering was down for period of time, during the last conversion you could not order for 2 weeks unless you went in the store which is not very conducive for ghost kitchens.
They finally installed ordering touchscreens/kiosks which was desperately needed to keep the ghost kitchens alive, but by the time they were installed most of the ghost kitchens had already failed. Also the kiosks didn't work very well and eventually were removed after only a couple months in service in Fall of 2023. They still have not been added back as of today (01/06/24).
All of the ghost kitchens except Vegan Junk Food have closed due to the lack of ordering kiosks and ordering system issues but there are still three vendors in the visible locations in the food hall.
These are the concepts that closed, in order of when they closed over the past year. I may have missed one:
· Bombay Kitchen
· Laoban Dumplings
· Alta Calidad
· Fish Scale
· Mission Burger
· Greek Aroma (this is really missed by me!)
· Sonny and Sons
· Money Muscle BBQ
· Mr. Bake Sweets
The building itself is very nice and the location gets lots of foot traffic, they just need more effective management ASAP and need to fix the ordering kiosks and get them back and stop changing ordering systems so often. It has a lot of potential to be good under the right leadership.
Now for the good news!
Riverdale Park Station is getting a Pilates Studio next to District Taco.
https://www.clubpilates.com/location/riverdalepark
Since Gold's does NOT offer Pilates this makes a lot of sense.
This should also help out Le Fantome with even more foot traffic.
Also Le Fantome still has Horu Sushi which is probably the best sushi I have tried and was the only survivor from the original 10 Le Fantome kitchens for a good reason. If you not tried Horu Sushi you should. Really top notch.
They also replaced Sonny and Sons chicken sandwiches with what I think is a better chicken sandwich place, Hot Lola's. Hot Lola's has very good chicken sandwiches' and you can choose your spice level which is nice.
The also just added Holy Croque which is mostly French food like Croque Monsieur sandwiches.
In other retail news, Lens Crafters looks done. Construction finally started at the end of 2022 and it looks like they are getting ready to open.
Yogi Castle which was announced way back in 2022 had lots of permitting problems and just got the permits it needed at the end of 2023. Construction still has not started there so it's going to be a long while before this opens. I am not sure how these businesses are willing to wait so many years to open and it seems like permitting around this area must be a very high bar.
The last thing that is coming here is Removery which is a laser tattoo removing business.
Construction on this is completed and it is slated to open in 10 days on 1/16/2024.
In addition, the retail leasing company also subdivided the empty location next to the FedEx Office location to make it available to rent just half of it, probably because no one has taken the leap to rent that whole space.
Glad to see more of these locations filling in. It's been a slow process but it's getting there.
