Sussex merchant seeks suitable space as NCC reno deadline approaches
Six weeks before the National Capital Commission wants her to vacate her long-established store on Sussex Drive to allow needed structural repairs, Julie Thibault still has no idea where she will set up shop in the new year.
“It’s been a totally frustrating process, I must admit,” said Thibault, who has run her eponymous boutique selling designer clothes for babies and children at 463 Sussex Dr. for nearly a decade. “I’m pretty tired of this topic, and I’d like this to be resolved.”
Thibault said the NCC offered her what it described as comparable space in a building behind a jewelry store two blocks away on Sussex Drive, but she refused. “I’ve got 20 feet of Sussex frontage, and they were offering me zero in back of a building at the very outer edge of the market.
“I get most of my business from walk-by and drive-by traffic,” she said Tuesday. “That would just kill me back there.”
The NCC wants Thibault and all other tenants on the east side of Sussex between Murray and Clarence streets to move out so it can restore and upgrade a string of heritage buildings it owns on that block. The construction will begin in January and will take a year to complete.
NCC officials have been able to find temporary accommodation for most of the other tenants, including fashion designer Richard Robinson and the fashion design school that he and his wife, Louise, run.
After 30 years on Sussex Drive, they’ll relocate for a year to thirdfloor quarters at 100 Sparks St., where the school will operate and Robinson will continue to design clothes for his devoted clientele. People will be able to purchase the ready-to-wear clothes sold in Robinson’s current retail store at the temporary Sparks Street location, but it won’t be a storefront boutique.
Once the work on Sussex is done, the Robinsons will return to the Sussex location.
“It’s for the better,” Louise Robinson said of the year ahead, “but we’re not looking forward to it.”
Origin Studios — a design studio for museums — will move from its second-floor office at 457A Sussex St. to new quarters on Murray Street, where it will remain after the repairs are done.
“It was kind of good timing,” company president Michael Plamondon said. “We wanted more space anyways.”
It’s the second time in the past year the firm has had to move out. The first was last Christmas, when contractors began working on the building ’s façade.
“Heritage buildings have their challenges,” Plamondon said. “When we moved back in, they said they thought they could handle it with some Band-Aid solutions.
“But the more they looked at the buildings surrounding it, the more they realized that the smartest thing was just to get everyone out and get the building fixed before it falls down. As painful as it is for us, it’s the smart way to do it.”
Thibault, who has 2½ years left on her five-year lease, is still negotiating with the NCC. While things haven’t gone completely sour, she said, “Right now, it’s still not working so well.
“They’re at the point where they’re saying they could just work around me if they have to. I think they’re not playing nice right now.”
Is staying put an option? “Oh, my God, no,” Thibault replied. “I’ve been through three major construction projects in the last six years here, and it’s brutal.”
Sales have plummeted during past construction work. “People see scaffolding and they walk away.”
The thing is, Thibault loves being on Sussex. “That’s where my market is. I really need to be visible to that market.”