Maison Michel decamps

We had hardly completed our posting about the new Bob Marley photo exhibit at antique store Maison Michel when we got word that the store had, in fact, closed its doors earlier in the week.  Maison Michel thus joins a lengthening list of departing Madison Park businesses.  The store had seen its share of troubles, experiencing a burglary during the summer of 2009, and a hasty departure last spring from its previous location in the infamous Madison Street building of Constance Gillespie.   The store moved to its current location in the Villa Marina building on 43rd Avenue E. last summer, joining forces with McQuesten Fine Arts to include an art gallery component.


The sudden departure of Maison Michel is certainly not welcome news for Villa Marina's owner, Lakeside Capital Management, which is attempting to push the retail core of the Village a little closer to the Lake.  Lakeside has just finished building out a new (and interestingly configured) retail space in the building, right next door to the now-departed Maison Michel.  The "For Lease" sign on that unit went up last week.  But 43rd is a bit off the beaten path for Madison Park shoppers, and it has been reported to us that Maison Michel's owner, Michael Schoonmaker, was complaining about the lack of foot traffic past his store almost from the moment he arrived.  And while the street is not entirely devoid of retail, there's certainly not much.


In fact, apart from the Madison Park Conservatory directly across the street,  the only business drawing foot traffic to the street, as far as we know, is Terzo Salon, the rebranded remnant of Spa del Lago.  The salon moved into the Villa Marina building earlier in year, leaving its former space across the street vacant.  So by our count, that means three retail units on 43rd now awaiting tenants.

Another tenant says ‘enough is enough’

If you wandered down to the “Village” over the weekend you may have noticed that there’s suddenly another retail vacancy in the heart of the business district. At the end of last month Maison Michel at Madison Park decamped from its long-time space at 4118 E. Madison Street, leaving Spa Jolie as the only remaining tenant in that once-charming, now-notorious building.

As we reported last summer, building owner Constance Gillespie is known for her eccentricity, her hard bargaining with tenants, and her unwillingness to spend money on the rapidly-deteriorating structure. It was this last point that apparently caused the rift with the owner of the now-departed antique and fine furnishings store. Though I didn’t get a return call from Maison Michel principal Michael Schoonmaker regarding this story, I am told that he finally could take no more and decided to move to another location in Madison Park (around the corner on 43rd Avenue E.)

So while the move is not a retail loss to the neighborhood, having another unoccupied storefront on the main drag is certainly not a plus for the merchants of Madison Park. And this is hardly likely to be a temporary situation. The building’s central unit has been vacant for years; and based on appearance, the building is clearly in an advancing state of decline.

I recently came across a a shopping website on which Madison Park was referred to as having a “quaint” retail district. It looks we just got a bit quainter.

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Thieves in the night: hardly a random act

This was the scene at Madison Park Hardware on Thanksgiving morning, following a break-in the previous night. The store (located at 1837 42nd Avenue E.) has been broken into many times in the past, but I believe that forced entry usually occurs through the alley side. In this case, the front door was the access point, the burglars either battering or kicking the door in, breaking the glass, damaging the door frame, and wrecking the kick plates. Not a pretty sight, and one that the police and the store owners were investigating when I wandered by during the morning; so there was no immediate assessment of the consequences.

Unfortunately, this kind of criminal activity is becoming all too common in the neighborhood lately, at least based on anecdotal evidence. At a recent meeting of the Madison Park Community Council, more than one third of the audience raised their hands when asked whether they had been recent victims of either a car or house burglary. One of my neighbors actually reported that the front seats had been stolen out of his parked car during the summer.

I will be doing a posting next week concerning the East Precinct's Crime Prevention efforts. At least for residential areas, a formalized block watch program might be one way to help fight crime in the 'hood. More to follow...

UPDATE: Scott McKee of Madison Park Hardware reports by email that the burglars, in what was clearly a premeditated act, stole the store's safe and apparently brought their own hand truck in order to cart the safe out of the store.

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UPDATE TO THE UPDATE: Antiques and fine furnishings store Maison Michael II (4118 East Madison St.) was also hit that night, presumably by the same brazen crew that broke into Madison Park Hardware. Owner Michael Schoonmaker told me that the store was entered through a side window, probably sometime between 3 and 4 in the morning. The store was not trashed, fortunately, but some items were taken, including the store's computer.