Posted Nov 6, 2011, 4:58 AM
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Registered User
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Join Date: May 2010
Location: Toronto
Posts: 2,260
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I remember someone on this forum saying that Dworkin Furs finally sold their land to Phoenix Homes. I guess it's true. If it is Phoenix it's a shame that the lower quality builders are buying the most important real estate.
Quote:
Landmark Ottawa retailer Dworkin Furs set to close doors
By Kristy Nease, The Ottawa Citizen
November 5, 2011 10:05 PM
After 110 years of business in Ottawa, despite changing hands and the tumultuous ebb and flow of fur popularity, the Rideau Street landmark Dworkin Furs is closing its doors for good.
An advertisement in Saturday’s Citizen announced a going-out-of-business sale but didn’t say exactly when the store was expected to close. The shop’s website didn’t say, either.
The announcement marks the beginning of the final chapter for the retailer with a long Ottawa history.
When Abraham Dworkin first moved his family into the red-brick Victorian building on Rideau Street in 1901, he ran a tailor shop out of the basement before starting to make and sell fur coats.
Roy Saipe, Dworkin’s son-in-law, joined the business in the 1930s and quickly transformed it into one of Canada’s largest fur outlets.
Dworkin remained a family-run enterprise until 1969, when John Toth bought the business from Saipe. Toth ran it for years with his daughter, Barbara Toth, and Saipe stayed on for the first six years for training.
Before the purchase, Toth had worked at a large Montreal fur manufacturer that supplied furs to Dworkin, and over time he had developed a close relationship Saipe. When Saipe decided he wanted to sell the business, he convinced Toth to take over the Ottawa store.
When the shop celebrated its centennial in 2001, Toth told the Citizen that the retail fur industry had seen a number of ups and downs, including a boom in the 1970s, then a recession in the early 1990s.
“Then there was the backlash against furs, which started in Europe, and it was stronger there than it was here,” Toth said at the time. “It certainly hurt us, but sales have rebounded in recent years.”
Montreal restaurateur and Global Furs Inc. owner Tom Nacos took over two Ottawa fur shops, Dworkin and Burkholder Furs, in November that same year. (Burkholder had been in business for 92 years when Nacos closed it down in 2003.)
Nacos is out of the country and wasn’t available for comment on Saturday night, his son Christopher said.
[email protected]
twitter.com/kristynease
© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen
Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/business/La...e+doors/5664516/story.html#ixzz1ctUeXLbm
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It would be nice to see Claridge continue on better designs based on what they are doing at the Tribeca site and Waterstreet.
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