Village Squire, 1976-04, Page 12t.'r a swim Only one month a \ear. February,
..fid it rain and while this happened most of
the start took holiday s. Besides, during the
rain% season the sharks moved in on the
beaches
But .Mr Mandel remembers, after a few
weeks the great weather became monoton-
ous One of the things he likes about life in
Stratford is the change of the seasons, he
say s. Spring is like a miracle here in Canada.
Before long he had moved on to London,
England with the chain and held a high
position in the London Hilton.
But London, somewhat like Toronto, was
overbuilding in hotels. Seeing the trend, Mr.
Mandel wanted to get out. He came to have a
look at prospects in Canada and remembered
the remarks he'd heard about the need for
restaurants in Stratford when he'd been on an
earlier trip. He came back to look at the city
again.
• What he had in mind, he remembers, was a
barn on the outskirts of the city somewhere.
He didn't realize, however, that the barns of
Canada were a lot different than the barns he
%vas used to. They just weren't suitable.
The real estate agent who had been
showing him around the city was driving him
back into town when they passed the
MacKenzie Memorial Gospel Church and
almost jokingly Madell said "Now that's the
.kind of place I could do something with."
The agent looked a little funny, he recalls,
then told him that the congregation of the
church had been interested in selling a year
or so earlier but that the sale hadn't gone
through. The agent said he would approach
them again.
The long delicate road to a new restaurant
began. The congregation did a good deal of
soul searching about the propriety of turning
a church into a licensed restaurant, Mr.
Mandell recalls, but eventually they decided
to go ahead with the sale.
But it wasn't so easy. A long complicated
debate began with city hall over accomod-
ation for parking. The argument wouldn't
have taken place if the church had been on
the other side of the street which would have
meant it was in the core area of Stratford and
therefore need no parking at all. But city
regulations required there be one parking
space for every four persons the restaurant
could hold. The only way that could be done
was if houses were demolished. The dispute
was eventually resolved.
It was February 1975, before work could
begin on changing the church into a
restaurant. Looking at the restaurant today, it
looks as if there was really little work
involved. About the only visual changes are
the removal of the pews, the moving of the
facade of the old pipe orchestra from one side
to the centre of one end of the building, the
building of higher levels around the outside of
the hall for an upper dining level, the
stripping of the bricks on one end and the
usual paining and decorating.
The extensive and expensive renovations,
however, were behind (and under) the
scenes.
Perhaps the most drastic change was that a
basement ha4J to be added. There was only a
small basement in the church originally but
the new plans called for excavations of the
earth under nearly the whole church to add
more room necessary for staff locker rooms,
the wine cellar, washrooms, and other
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AT THE
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Clinton, Ont.
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