New Castle News
NEW CASTLE —
Running a restaurant is a tough business.
You have to know how to cater to customers. Creating a pleasant atmosphere helps to enhance the dining experience.
A successful restaurant operator knows how to manage inventory, to ensure there is enough of everything — but not so much that there’s waste.
Plus, it helps if the dishes that are served taste good.
Anyone who dines out regularly knows there are popular restaurants that survive, and even thrive, year after year. Others come and go with little fanfare.
Sometimes, the reasons for a restaurant’s failure are painfully obvious. At other times, it’s a mystery, as dining establishments can live or die on the changing tastes of a sometimes fickle clientele.
In short, putting together the right combination to create a long-standing restaurant is a challenge.
That’s why it should come as no great surprise that the Mill Street Grille in downtown New Castle is gone. It and a partner restaurant, The Basin, closed their doors last Thursday. They were the two main anchor businesses in Cascade Center at the Riverplex, a facility that’s struggled to find tenants.
Yet while restaurant openings and closings are relatively frequent occurrences, the news regarding the Mill Street Grille was more significant than usual. That’s because of what the restaurant had come to symbolize.
And by that, we refer to the notion of a revitalized downtown New Castle, a destination for people to find food, entertainment, shopping and the like. The improvements in the downtown, courtesy of considerable state financial support, have aided the area’s appearance immensely.
Unless the end result of these efforts is to attract new business, and support and expand existing ones, this type of public investment serves no constructive purpose. If an upscale restaurant such as the Mill Street Grille could not survive in the downtown, it’s a cause for concern.
But how much of a concern?
In recent years, various new businesses have opened in the downtown. Some have closed, while others remain.
That’s not an unexpected occurrence. There always is bound to be turnover and change in a downtown’s business makeup. And the reasons for that vary.
The good news, we suppose, is that the spaces being vacated by the Mill Street Grille and The Basin remain. For those who are enterprising, and have the resources to make a go of it, opportunity exists.
And we believe downtown New Castle has potential, despite this setback. With proper support from the city, and a sound customer base, good businesses can achieve success in the downtown.
