ASTORIA, QUEENS – Less than a year after it opened at a prominent store on 30th Avenue, the Mexican restaurant Calexico closed over the weekend, and its owner told Patch that the pandemic was to blame.
The small chain now lists Astoria’s site as “no longer open for business,” even though it served consumers Friday afternoon, citizens wrote in a Facebook thread about the shutdown.
Calexico co-founder Dave Vendley showed the shutdown when it arrived Monday, saying it was a “delayed COVID response. “
Calexico opened in December 2021 in the independent triangle-shaped construction between Newtown Avenue and 32nd Street. His arrival had been in the works since 2019, and Vendley said the pandemic hit just as Calexico was halfway through the space’s renovation.
The pandemic “completely halted our structure for more than a year,” Vendley said, but they were too far ahead to leave the new location.
By the time he opened Calexico, he had “a very short way to go to succeed,” Vendley said. Although it gained ground in the following months and developed a strong organization of repeat customers, the company had enough cash in storage to cope with many periods of drought.
Calexico’s “death sentence” is the recent heat wave, which further slowed the business, he said.
Its demise is the latest setback for the storefront, which commentators on Astoria’s Facebook and Reddit pages describe as “cursed” for the common turnover that reigns there.
Since 2014, the 30th Avenue area has seen four other tenants: the Greek restaurant Athens Cafe closed that year and continued to the southern place Burnside Biscuits, which in turn replaced the Salt fish fry restaurant.
But Vendley laughed at the hypothesis that Calexico’s struggles arose from the place itself, or from its owner, who had worked heavily with the restaurant’s property.
“We’re sure he’s not cursed and that someone will do well here,” Vendley said. “I wish it had been us. “
In fact, Calexico’s closure is even more painful because its owners are “very confident” it would have succeeded in Astoria without the pandemic. It was in Astoria that Vendley first lived with his siblings when they moved to New York from his hometown: the California border with the city of Calexico, which has become the restaurant’s namesake.
“We felt like we were gaining ground in the neighborhood,” Vendley said. “We like Astoria. “
Given the difficulties of the 30th Avenue window, some citizens began to think about reusing the construction as a network area or demolishing it altogether to create a plaza or a park.
But Vendley noted that any business that moves to the area will have a route, as it will take advantage of the in-house innovations in which Calexico has invested significant sums.
Vendley founded Calexico in 2006 with his two brothers. Calexico expanded in the following years to 4 other locations around the city (not counting Astoria), plus two more in Detroit and Bahrain.
Do you have any advice about Astoria? Contact journalist Nick Garber in nick. garber@patch. com.
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