A small business that is part of an initiative to help revitalize a community in one of Charlotte’s Opportunity Corridors will close next month, a year after it opened.
Pauline Tea-Bar Apothecary, located along Beatties Ford Road in northwest Charlotte, is expected to close at the end of February. Owner Sherry Waters opened her first tea room near Wilkinson Boulevard in west Charlotte about five years ago. He said his second location, which opened last January, doesn’t attract the same level of business. And like small business owners in rapidly changing areas of Charlotte, their rent is rising.
“We just never saw the traffic we need to sustain it,” Waters said. “That’s the first reason. The second reason is that even if we saw traffic increase again, the rent would triple what we were paying.”
As first reported Q city subwayThe Historic West End Partners group, under which Waters operates, does not plan to renew its lease. The Pauline Tea-Bar Apothecary on Beatties Ford Road, named after Water’s grandmother, opened its doors as part of Historic West End Partners’ “Thrive” revitalization efforts to preserve and attract Black-owned businesses.
Waters says the closure will allow him to focus more on his first location near Wilkinson Boulevard, another part of the city where a lot of development is taking place. And she is equally committed to ensuring her grandmother’s legacy lives on.
“We have apartments about to open right across the street. So, we’re going to have a lot of traffic,” Waters said. “We’re going to have a lot of hours there, we’re going to expand our capacity and that’s going to allow me to put some focus and intentionality into the team that we’ve built.”