Last round for Midtown owner
Grant says family atmosphere took downtown tavern a long way
By BILL SPURR Features Writer | Five Questions
Mon. Jun 8 - 4:46 AM
The closing date isn’t absolutely final, but as it stands now, June 25 is the last day the Midtown Tavern will be open for business at the corner of Grafton and Prince streets, where it’s been since 1949.
The building will be demolished to make way for the city’s new convention centre, but Eric and Bob Grant, sons of owner Doug Grant, will move the business to a new location just down the street.
Eric Grant has been working at the Midtown for 31 years.
Q. When you turn the locks here for the last time, what will you miss the most about this space, this room?
A. I’m not going to say the people, because the people are hopefully going to follow us somewhere else. I can walk around this place with my eyes closed, you know where everything is. That’s going to be the issue, going somewhere else. I know where everything’s at around here, same as Dad knew where everything’s at. That’s one thing.
Q. You had the chance to have a tavern in the new convention centre, you considered moving somewhere else and you thought for a while it must just be the end of the Midtown. When you were considering all those options, what were the factors that you were weighing?
A. Besides the fact that I’m 50 and most of the guys around here are the same, or close, it’s tough to start something new at this stage of the game. Nobody here is ready to retire. They’re just trying to make a living and pay the bills, us included. The Midtown is Doug Grant, and what it’s become would never have got done if it hadn’t been for my dad’s hard work, treating people right, getting the bad people out of here, getting rid of them, so the nice people can come here and not worry about who’s sitting there behind them, like you have to at some places.
Q. Now that you’ve decided where you’re going to go, when you get there, will you try to duplicate the look of this place?
A. We’re going into business with the guys down there. It’s going to be sort of, we think, the best of both worlds in a way. We’re going to try to be the Midtown. We don’t do much business late at night. We close at 11. Food shuts down at quarter after 10 and we’re going to try and keep that going the same way. It’s going to be us and our menu and our food and we’ll do what we do, which we think we do pretty good, up until 10-10:30 at night. John and Scotty, who own Boomers — we’re going into a partnership with them — will do their thing at nighttime. They do what they do late at night, and they do half-decent, three or four nights a week. Hopefully, that’ll get better, some of our customers might decide to stay when they’re having a good time, maybe have a couple of drinks, maybe dance.
Q. What will it be called?
A.The Midtown sign will be outside there and it’s going to be in the name somewhere. It’s gotta be. We’ve got a loyal bunch of customers who are telling me and telling the guys here, this has got to be somewhere, and we will come.
Q. What is it that makes people feel so strongly about this place?
A. When people are heading out the door, (they get) ‘See ya, guys. Thanks,’ whether I got to holler it across the tavern or what. They turn, ‘You’re welcome. See ya later.’ My wife says that goes a long ways. I tell people, it’s kind of corny, but it’s a big family around here. There’s people that just want us to say hi and serve them, there’s people that expect to get both barrels and if I don’t give it to them, they say ‘What’s wrong with you?’ Everybody’s different. I had a guy here this afternoon, he came in with a picture of his son sitting on the bar 11 years ago. He was eight years old. Today, he had his beer at the Midtown, proud as a peacock to be here with all his dad’s buddies. He had three beer. I forced the third one on him. I get guys who come here when they’ve had a bad day, and it’s kind of nice to be that crutch for people sometimes.
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) and overall I think it is attractive. It would be nice if Brian MacKay-Lyons designed the new library.
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