Walk down Beacon Street this month and you will pass at least two dark storefronts that used to mean something. Party Favors, the party-supply shop and bakery that outfitted three decades of Brookline birthdays in Coolidge Corner, went dark for good on July 15. Farther down Beacon Street in Washington Square, the space that held Golden Temple for 66 years sits empty after the restaurant closed this summer. Local coverage has framed the pattern as a warning sign, and Brookline.News ran a piece on August 4 asking whether the town's small business community is in trouble.
It is a reasonable question to ask while looking at empty glass. But look at what is filling in around those closures and a different, more specific story appears. The businesses shutting down are almost all solo operations that have run on the same lease structure since before the internet existed. The businesses opening are almost all backed by someone who already runs three, four, or six other locations somewhere else. Brookline's commercial streets are not hollowing out. They are changing hands from people who own one restaurant to people who own several.
Two Closures, One Shared Math Problem
Golden Temple and Party Favors had little in common on the menu, but they shared a business model: a single owner, a single location, and decades of the same lease relationship. Party Favors had operated under the Pergantis family since 1992, on top of a business that dates back to 1965, according to Patch's coverage of the closing. Golden Temple ran even longer, closing after 66 years in Washington Square.
Tom Coppi has watched this math from inside The Picture Place, the framing shop he took over in Coolidge Corner in 2015. His own business has stayed steady, he told Brookline.News, in part because there is always a need for memories to be framed and displayed. But he does not think that steadiness generalizes to a new operator trying to open something today.
"It was much easier to start a business in the '70s and '80s, whereas there was a better balance of rent versus income."
Chris Mutty, who ran the Brookline Chamber of Commerce until it folded into a regional group this spring, put a finer point on why fewer people are stepping up to fill vacancies with anything new. He described a business climate where people are "sitting on the sidelines rather than making investments and taking risks," a hesitation he tied to broader economic uncertainty rather than anything specific to Brookline. The chamber itself is a small case study in the same pattern: it dissolved and its members rolled into the Charles River Regional Chamber, a larger regional operation with more staff and more capital behind it, and Mutty joined its staff as part of the move.
The New Arrivals All Have Someone Backing Them
Set the closures next to what is actually moving into Brookline's commercial corridors and the contrast sharpens. None of the recent openings are first restaurants for their owners.
- Wonder, the food hall concept owned by Grubhub's parent company, filed a health permit for a 3,500-square-foot space plus basement at 392 Harvard Street, just north of Coolidge Corner next to Congregation Kehillath Israel. Wonder is expanding into dozens of Greater Boston locations this year, and Brookline is one stop on a much larger map.
- Norinori Test Kitchen opened in the former Cleveland Circle space at 399 Chestnut Hill Avenue, serving handrolls and bento boxes. It is the third restaurant from NoToro Hospitality Group, which also runs Matsunori Handroll Bar and Mai.
- Jumbo Seafood announced plans to open at 1032 Commonwealth Avenue, taking over the former Xiang's Hunan Kitchen space. It would be the chain's second location, with the original still running on Hudson Street in Chinatown.
- Arwa Coffee was slated to open at 1333 Beacon Street in Coolidge Corner in March, one of the openings Boston Magazine tracked as part of a wave of new cafes across Greater Boston this year.
None of this is a knock on any of these businesses. It is simply a description of who can afford to open a storefront in Brookline right now: operators who have already proven a concept elsewhere and can absorb a slow first year in a new neighborhood while they build a customer base. That is a very different financial position than a family opening its only location on savings.
A Different Kind of Vacancy in Washington Square
Not every dark window on Beacon Street fits the rent story, and the corner of Washington Square is the exception that proves it. Painted Burro, the Mexican restaurant at 1665 Beacon Street, and Vinodivino, the wine shop next door at 1669, have both been closed since a fire broke out in Painted Burro's basement in the early morning hours of January 14, according to Boston.com's initial report. Nearly seven months later, both spaces are still dark, and the reason has nothing to do with demand or rent.
The timeline tells the story:
- January 14: the fire starts in Painted Burro's basement and damages the building's electrical system. No injuries are reported.
- Mid-April: Brookline's chief electrical inspector completes a temporary service inspection, a necessary step before the building can get power back.
- Late May or early June: Eversource finally restores temporary electricity to the building, more than a month after that inspection cleared.
- June 4: Brookline.News reports both businesses are still waiting on insurance settlements and a full electrical engineer's sign-off before real repairs can start. The building's owner, identified as Shabtay Alon of Rasa Realty, could not be reached for comment.
- August: the spaces remain empty, nearly seven months after the fire.
Painted Burro's owner, Joseph Cassinelli, called the fire a total loss for the location, coming just two years after the restaurant's last expansion. His team posted on Instagram that they "can't wait to re-open bigger and better than before." Painted Burro is part of Alpine Restaurant Group, which also runs locations in Somerville, Waltham, and Cambridge's Harvard Square, plus a sister restaurant in the South End. Vinodivino operates six locations in total, with branches in Newton, Needham, Marion, Kenmore, Beacon Hill, and Brookline. Both companies have the resources to rebuild. What they do not have is control over a landlord's insurance timeline or an electrical contractor's schedule. This is the clearest evidence that Brookline's commercial vacancies are not one story. Some are about rent economics. This one is about a building system that failed and a repair process nobody can rush.
What Doesn't Fit the Pattern
If the pattern held everywhere, every legacy business on Beacon Street would be vulnerable. It does not hold everywhere, and the exceptions tell you something too. The Coolidge Corner Theatre, converted from a 1906 church into an Art Deco movie house in 1934, has anchored that corner for nine decades. Brookline Booksmith has been a Coolidge Corner fixture since 1961. David Leschinsky, who owns Eureka! Puzzles & Games in Coolidge Corner, told Brookline.News he is less worried about any single closure than about what the overall mix of neighboring businesses looks like over time, since one shop's foot traffic tends to feed the next one's.
The businesses holding steady share a trait: they serve a need, whether it is a night at the movies, a specific book, or a puzzle for a rainy weekend, that does not compete directly with same-day delivery. The businesses closing shared the opposite trait. They were retail and food-service operations on standard commercial leases, competing against exactly the kind of convenience that Amazon and delivery apps now offer.
What To Do on the Ground This Month
None of this needs to keep anyone off Beacon Street this August. Dine Out Boston runs August 1 through 15, and Brookline has three participants offering the $55 dinner tier: Capricho Colombian Steakhouse, Gyu-Kaku Japanese BBQ, and La Morra. The Larz Anderson Auto Museum keeps its Sunday lawn series going most weekends through October, a low-key way to spend a morning without needing a reservation anywhere. And if you have not tried Norinori's handrolls in Cleveland Circle or grabbed a coffee at Arwa on Beacon Street, both are new enough this year to still feel like a discovery rather than a habit.
The corridor is not disappearing. It is changing who owns it, and that shift is worth watching whether you have lived here for thirty years or three.
If you are curious how these shifts in Brookline's commercial streets connect to what is happening in the residential market around them, Beth Dickerson can walk you through it. Get an Instant Home Valuation or schedule a confidential consultation to talk through what is changing on your block.
