Whole lotta lunch

Next-door neighbors Vasquez and partner Sue Dixon have been in business for 12 years — Gabriel’s Café on John Street was a perennial success. They started renovating the Kimm building for his bakery and café plans before several other lunch spots were ever seen on the horizon.

Vasquez says he is admittedly frustrated as well as deeply concerned — there is only a finite amount of folks seeking breakfast or lunch, and he worries that limited parking may stymie people from coming Uptown for lunch. “Jane’s Ice Cream [and luncheonette] was here for years and I know for a fact that when we opened, we had an effect,” said Vasquez. “There’s only a certain amount of people who come and eat at lunchtime.”

Dixon concurred. “When Bread Alone was here for a while we lost about 75 percent of business. Yum Yum will see the same effect when we open.”

Vasquez and Dixon say their regular customers hail from the courthouse and other professional offices and noted people are not necessarily coming Uptown for lunch, but dinner is a different story. They also felt strongly that parking hampers potential lunch visitors from coming Uptown for a quick bite. Dixon concluded, however, that the arrival of another bakery café right next door and a few doors down will light a spark. “The good thing about competition is that it makes you perform.”

Ireland native Garrett Roche is currently refurbishing the former Nekos Luncheonette on Wall Street into a restaurant. “Where I come from, food for me was always the epicenter, the key to creating community,” said Roche. “What’s missing from Uptown right now is the presence of small communities, or even the structure of communities aside from the obvious elements like the O-Positive folks.”

Roche said he personally witnessed Williamsburg in Brooklyn develop from a “red-light district” into “a spot desirable on every level,” and added his enthusiasm for a similar path to glory for Uptown Kingston. “If these businesses do it correctly, [customers] will come,” he said. “They will help to develop Uptown and put it back on the map.” Roche affirmed his belief that with the current trend of more restaurants, shopping and arts and music, Uptown Kingston will become a destination unto itself.

Trying to get in on the ground floor

Culinary Institute of America associate professor of marketing and food service management Bill Guilfoyle offered some insight into the seemingly sudden surge. “It’s been downtrodden in past years and people are getting in at or below market rates,” he said. “When that happens, it attracts other people into the area and so the other businesses start, including those cool little specialty shops. Art galleries and restaurants are always who pioneers in urban areas — like SoHo, Tribeca and even Queens. Restaurants always do the first.”

Guilfoyle said he didn’t believe Uptown has reached its limit, although admitted that lunch is an altogether different scenario. “The deal with lunch is that it’s contingent upon a shopper population or very much more importantly is employee-based. There’s a number of offices there. People who are there every day, and need to go out every day, and need or want to go out to lunch. Lunch is always, always, always dependent on an employee base.”

He cited Rhinebeck as a destination reaching its saturation point, and said it’s become increasingly difficult to run a business there. Guilfoyle said Restaurant 101 dictates that lunch is generally not as profitable as dinner because so many restaurants are dependent on alcohol sales.

Guilfoyle does not believe there is any reliable metric to gauge how many is too many, and reiterated what Dixon and Roche both expressed — only the strong survive. He did emphasize that more businesses bring businesses.

How big a factor is parking? “Parking is huge,” Guilfoyle said. “How many people live in Uptown Kingston and how many people are taking their parking spots? It’s an enormous issue. I don’t think Kingston has run into that problem yet — that might be a way to judge critical mass. I don’t think that they have reached that saturation point for parking.”

‘Beyond the working class’

Some feel that the story of art is a story of ups and downs. Alan Eisenson of Woodstock just opened his new Just Alan store on North Front Street, selling everything from antiques to fine teas to jewelry feels that Uptown art is on the up. “This area is new and up and coming place,” he said. “It’s re-energized. People are moving in. Restaurants and buildings are changing hands. This is a place where art galleries are opening. The challenge is to make things happen.”

He said Uptown reminds him of starting his Woodstock Just Alan store in 1972, and insisted that Uptown is a “bargain of the century.” Eisenson bought the building his new store is in and his daughter, Arianna Eisenson, bought the building next door in which she now runs Thou Art gallery. Eisenson said thousands of people walk between the government buildings and doctors’ offices and projects those professionals would be his customers. “These people are beyond the working class,” he said. “These people who work here have surplus money, like the insurance brokers, lawyers and doctors.”