“Hey, Brendan. I think City Pub is closed but I’m not sure. Can you look into it?”
– BOSSY BUNGALOWER READER
Neighborhood-focused City Pub Orlando (Website) opened in the former home of North Quarter Tavern back in December 2018, along with its sister bar, Bitters and Bottles Cocktail Lounge (Website), which had a grand opening in January 2019.
A note was placed on the door of the restaurant/pub back in July stating “We are closed for the summer, we will see you in the fall!” with no mention of the reason on either of its social channels.
Fast forward to a month later, another note has been placed in the window, but this one is from the Orange County Court of the 9th Judicial Circuit of Florida, or rather an Eviction Notice had been taped to the premises.
We reached out to Doug Taylor, the managing partner for Church Street Entertainment, which owned and operated the pub for some more information and received the following statement.
“From our perspective, we chose to vacate the space as of July 1, 2023. After almost six years of attempting to make that space work and after almost five years of being open to the public, we finally just could not continue to bear those restaurant losses, especially in light of all the ongoing expense-side economic impacts that the Orlando Police Department has placed on us operators through the new ordinance. Locally owned operators like us can sometimes support one significant cash outflow from their operations, but certainly not two.
We certainly wish we were still there, and we know that we made a number of friends in the area. We hope that the space is filled by the landlord with a business that can sustain itself for the good people of the North Quarter. Class A rent in that trade area, however, is simply not viable for a restaurant operator in our experience.
In summary, we chose to leave because of recurring losses and the additional and unsustainable economic burdens placed on a limited number of downtown operators.”
– DOUG TAYLOR, MANAGING PARTNER, CHURCH STREET ENTERTAINMENT
City Pub was located at 861 N. Orange Avenue [GMap], just north of downtown Orlando.
