Bricktown West

[Pete]

Lackmeyer is on board with our plan in his chat this morning.

A Good Egg has said they do not have any interest in Bricktown and I doubt that has changed.

[warreng88]

A Good Egg has said they do not have any interest in Bricktown and I doubt that has changed.

Yeah, especially now with the recent opening of three restaurants.

[HangryHippo]

A Good Egg has said they do not have any interest in Bricktown and I doubt that has changed.

I'm sure you're right. It's too bad though because it'd be close to me and they could print money.

[Pete]

Whatever goes in there next needs to chuck the ground floor space -- which is big and windowless -- and just focus on the great upstairs space and patio.

I went into West two different times and on both occasions the upstairs wasn't even open, so I sat in the windowless, lifeless bar.

It's all way too much space for a restaurant anyway. Even a lot of the upstairs is private / event space.

The only way a restaurant would work downstairs is to ditch Painted Door and provide windows and access out to Sheridan. But that's not going to happen because Avis just remodeled Painted Door.

[soonerguru]

LULZ at West blaming their closing on the Streetcar. WTF?

[hfry]

They in no way blamed it on the streetcar. They stated that with the streetcar going in they knew business would be ever harder and made the decision to leave now. Not very difficult to understand.

[Spartan]

You're right. That's not blaming the streetcar, just claiming it's the reason they went under.

[bradh]

It's a copout, if your place is worth visiting, people will find a way around construction, at least I would.

[Paseofreak]

I'll disagree with that logic. Trattoria Il Centro was well worth visiting and P180 put them out of business. That said, West Bricktown was an enormous managerial clusterf*#k. I have numerous friends and acquaintances that worked at West North that refused to work at Bricktown if they had enough seniority to pull that off and a bunch more that quit soon after and went elsewhere if they didn't. By all reports, it was a nightmare. Really poorly executed from a management standpoint. Promoting your party buds rarely works in your favor.

[Pete]

I'll disagree with that logic. Trattoria Il Centro was well worth visiting and P180 put them out of business.

I believe the conventional wisdom is that they were struggling mightily before P180 caused them any problems.

And long after the roadwork, they could not get another restaurant to go into that space, which is now offices.

[Paseofreak]

I believe the conventional wisdom is that they were struggling mightily before P180 caused them any problems.

And long after the roadwork, they could not get another restaurant to go into that space, which is now offices.

OK, might have been a lot of things. Too early in that area, prices too high, I don't know, but it was a fine place to eat and thin margins in the service industry can be tipped to failure by the slightest upset. P180 surely didn't help. It was a pretty big place and filling it after a failure could have been hindered by perception. Nevertheless, if West was already struggling for other reasons, streetcar construction was enough to to be the death knell.

[Spartan]

I'll disagree with that logic. Trattoria Il Centro was well worth visiting and P180 put them out of business. That said, West Bricktown was an enormous managerial clusterf*#k. I have numerous friends and acquaintances that worked at West North that refused to work at Bricktown if they had enough seniority to pull that off and a bunch more that quit soon after and went elsewhere if they didn't. By all reports, it was a nightmare. Really poorly executed from a management standpoint. Promoting your party buds rarely works in your favor.

P180 was also legitimately terrible. We'll see about the streetcar construction, but P180 sets a pretty low bar to hurdle in terms of project management.

There is no reason for the streetcar or any streetscape to be that terrible.

[d-usa]

I think there is a difference between blaming the streetcar for closing, and acknowledging that you are already struggling without it and that it's only going to get worse.

[soonerguru]

They in no way blamed it on the streetcar. They stated that with the streetcar going in they knew business would be ever harder and made the decision to leave now. Not very difficult to understand.

No. Very easy to understand. Their business was failing already and the streetcar had nothing to do with it.

[Rover]

West food has always been mediocre at best. Not surprising it closed there. Western store Has been really average at best too.wouldnt be surprised if it folded too, and no streetcar to blame there.

[shawnw]

I was at West on Western on a weeknight last week and it had plenty of business (which I was surprised about)

[soonerguru]

It's hit or miss when I go in the Western location. I was there once on a Saturday night at 7 p.m. for a function in back. The restaurant portion of the space was completely empty. Not exaggerating. Recently, I went in for a drink and app after work and there were quite a few occupied tables. It's hard to predict. The problem is that they try to do more than they can execute, and their ideas just aren't that good. It's a common problem in OKC. There are a lot of restaurants with good concepts on paper that really don't execute. There are really only a handful of very good to great restaurants in OKC.