Dropping like flies: Stoddard's closes for good in a deserted downtown

That other location in Chestnut Hill closed eventually, right?

Do you want to be firing back a Moscow Mule outside in 45 degree weather, heaters or not, with Silver Line idling buses blowing fumes into your face?

Were not the majority in this city or in this state.

Now, it sounds to me like you think that it's asinine that somebody in Iowa or South Carolina picks the federal body which governs us in Massachusetts, in which case, at this point, with the gaping parity in mental fitness, I wholeheartedly agree.

If Will LaTullipe can’t score a phone number, is a bar even worth opening?

Christ. It’s almost like there is a diverse array of bars to appeal to a broad spectrum of tastes. And for the record Stoddard’s imported bar was beautiful.

a liquor license, just as we pay fees for all sorts of licenses to do business and conduct other aspects of public life.

The reason Boston liquor licenses are so expensive is that the Commonwealth legislatively seized control of and deliberately capped them, creating artificial scarcity and inflated prices. I've recounted that history here before: Brahmins in the State House trying to retain some grasping control over a city they'd lost politically to Irish-American and Italian-American pols.

It's a travesty that it survives to this day, as it has created all kinds of problems for our restaurant scene even before the pandemic, namely, making it more difficult for neighborhood and independent chef/owners to start their own places, putting more licenses in the hands of deeper-pocketed, thuddingly mediocre national chain restaurants of the kind that dominate the Seaport.

RIP, Stoddard's: you were a really good beer bar with some cool atmosphere and one of the saltier barmen around.

also patronized the places that replaced them about fifty times more frequently. If you want a button shop to stay in business, you have to buy a lot of buttons. I stopped buying joke-shop merch when I was 13. Stoddard's the knife-seller was great, but it was maybe a once-a-year stopover.

I say the same thing about restaurants (or did pre-pandemic): if you love a place, frequent it, bring friends there, and boost it on social media. If you only visit once a year, you can't really complain if it goes out of business for lack of custom.

Stoddards is a big loss. One of the few places around that had a great beer selection AND could make very good cocktails. It was also a very nice looking place.

I have a fair amount of experience on the residential side. Have investigated the commercial side but not pulled the trigger.

What I suspect is happening is that the banks that hold the loans are not willing to work with the landlords. And commercial real estate financing is a completely different animal than residential real estate. Notes are typically refinanced every 5 years and a whole lot depends on your rent roll. Also, there are insane games that get played to minimize tax hits. And before you cry "tax dodger," some of these tax bills can be staggering. If you don't play the games, you can go from profitable to unprofitable based solely on taxes. So you pretty much have to play the game, or you go bankrupt.

I keep a money losing property in Texas because I'd rather bleed a few thousand a year now but at least pay down my mortgage than sell it at a loss compared to what I paid for it and then have to pay the IRS $70k for the privilege of losing money. Hopefully in 4 years I will be able to fluff it up to the point where I can justify a sale at a price that allows me to lose less money, or at least get a decent refinance package that keeps me going another 5 years.

Having that experience, I can see a variety of scenarios where it makes more financial sense for the landlord to have the space vacant. They can be going after the old business for the remainder of the lease, carry that as an "asset" on their books for the refinance, actively market for new corporate tenants (not even the pandemic seems to be able to quench our thirst for retail banks), and take big tax losses that may be able to offset gains on other properties.

I don't like the complexity of this system and I'm not defending it. But it is the system we have and it is probably a big part of why so many landlords are not working with their small business tenants. It may cost you significantly more money to do the right thing than it does to just give them the boot.

Maybe someone with more experience in the game can shed more light on it.