One of the most popular and arguably hip places to meet up for coffee in downtown Squamish, The Ledge Café on Cleveland Avenue, closed its doors to java-thirsty customers Monday, almost a year to the day after it opened.
“The problem is we have too much demand,” said Glenn Davies, The Ledge’s proprietor and lead pastor at The Rock Church, which owns the café. Davies said in terms of sales, November was the best month for the café since it opened in January 2013.
“We just don’t have the manpower,” Davies said.
He said he and a few others have been spending a lot of their personal time managing the Ledge.
“And my church has basically said, buddy, we need you to be our pastor,” Davies said.
“We don’t want to give false hope for a specific time, but…. we do want the community to know we have plans and we will be back, but we need some time to reassess [the café] and repurpose it, and when it does come back it will be better because we will be open longer and we will be able to do more things. I am confident that is going to happen, but I can’t give any dates.”
Davies said he does have some ideas about what may happen with the cafe.
“Part of the vision for this was to start up what is called a discipleship school, inviting young men and women to come here, they get trained in mission work, but while they are here they serve in the café and they are actually part of it,” he said.
“Obviously I was on the Business Improvement Association, I was on the branding committee, we love this town and we want to be an anchor and we want to be part of the restoration and the future of this community, and so we feel bad that we are letting the community down a little bit,” he said.
Davies said in the interim, the café will open from time to time for various events and outreach.
All profits from the café went towards the church’s community outreach projects in Squamish, according to Davies.
The church purchased the heritage building that housed the café in the fall of 2009 and then undertook a three-year restoration process before opening.
In other downtown news, the Red Apple discount store on Cleveland Avenue is closing, as many shoppers have noticed announced on giant banners outside the store. Red Apple management said the store would be closing sometime in January, but said they cannot speak to media and directed The Squamish Chief to the store’s Mississauga, Ont. headquarters. The Chief did not receive a response to enquiries for information.
“It is sad, there is good staff, and it is cheap,” Red Apple customer
Elisa Coroni told The Squamish Chief as she left the store on Friday. Coroni said she regularly comes from Pemberton with her friends to shop at the store. “They have good deals all the time.”
Bianca Peters, executive director of the Downtown Squamish BIA, said she feels badly for the employees who will lose their jobs, but she is not surprised to see the discount store closing.
“To be quite frank, we aren’t really surprised. There are a lot of dollar stores in our community and also with our demographic changing, I think we are getting a little more upscale,” she said.
Peters said she is excited to see what will replace the store come the New Year.
“Downtown has a lot of exciting things going on,” she said.
The Squamish Red Apple opened in 2012, taking over the previous Fields location. At the time, a spokeswoman for The Bargain Shop – Red Apple’s parent company – said the Squamish Red Apple would employ 15 to 20 people.
The Campfire Grill has also closed its downtown Cleveland Avenue location and new tenants are being sought. Requests for comment were not returned by press deadline.
