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Roslindale wine shop closing

Solera on Birch Street in Roslindale Square announced today it's closing forever on Sept. 30. The news comes just a few days after Birch Street Bistro also announced it's closing.

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Comments

If they have the same landlord, who got greedy....

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The Bistro closing wasn't due to rent. Just wanted to move on to something else. See the discussion in the FB Keep Roslindale Quirky group.

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I'm surprised anything is open in ROSL.
There's nowhere to park.

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Yea, that huge lot behind Citizens, the MBTA lot, and all the spaces on Robert, Belgrade...

Oh, I see - you want to park right in front of the door and if that's not possible you shake your fist & yell "BY GOD THERE ISN'T ENOUGH FREE SOCIALIST PARKING."

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“nowhere to park”…except for lots of on-street spaces and the huge free public parking lot - the one right across the street from the store in question.

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a joke flying over your head!

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Only the Taft Hill Lot which still has a COVOD tent on it is public. The rest of the parking is private and reserved for the shops or business that owns it. In recent times lot owners have taken to leaving "no parking" notes on cars found to be using their spaces for long-term parking elsewhere. Both Citizens Bank and Village Market periodically do this to free up space for their own customer base.

The train station charges for parking and their payment patrol stops in at random times both day and night. They actually have a camera that records the plate numbers and if you didn't pay you get a bill in the mail. They were even tagging church goers from St. Nectarios on a Sunday back when there was no Sunday trains. The lower lot is only free on Saturdays because the Main Streets group rents it out at a flat fee for the Farmers Market.

We can joke about this but the fact remains that the design of the business district concentrated on small niche-market types and many, especially the restaurants will freely tell you that their clientele is not predominantly from the immediate area, i.e. Roslindale and vicinity. Most of their customers are coming there from communities further out. So to be clear, few if any of the businesses in Roslindale's commercial area subsist on local walk-in trade or bus-in trade.

COVID was bad enough but the inability for their customer base to come here to trade is now a bigger issue.

Bistro is being replaced by a different type of restaurant with a different menu. Solera may have run its course. Again... a dedicated wine shop. Are we to believe that their trade was solely walk-in or bus in? C'mon now. Can you get their unique items at Blanchard's, Macy's, Atlas, Kelley's ?

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isn't that the wine store across the street from the craft brewery?
Jeez, I wonder what put them out of business?

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A craft brewery that brews beer put a wine store out of buisneess?

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I feel like a brewery whose primary business is selling pours of beer with the occasional cans to go and the wine-focused bottle shop with the occasional tasting night are servicing different needs.

Also, unsure of the implication here? Should distraction not have been allowed to open in case it would put solera out of business? Just musing, despite the continued existence of multiple other late night drink places in the square?

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Wine you buy and bring home is famously the exact same as beer you drink at a brewery, detective.

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We really liked that place. The selection wasn't huge but the emphasis on natural wines more than made up for it, and they were always very helpful. The fact that they regularly ran deep sales to turn over inventory helped. Well, they probably would have done better turning over inventory with regular, reliable hours. Too many nights we realized we should buy wine and the place would be closed. I guess it's no surprise that they're folding.

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There was a rumor floating around for a while (pre-COVID, I think?) that the owners of Solera wanted to retire and to sell their business to Streetcar, purveyors of fancy beer and wine in JP.

For whatever reason, that fell through.

So it may be partly due to rising rents for Solera's closing but not entirely. Similarly, Birch Street Bistro was in talks with another local chef to take it over before the pandemic...I don't think either business closing is solely due to the rents.

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I would not have been mad about streetcar having a storefront in rozzie. they’ve got a great selection.

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