City Denies Scotch and Lace Request to Move to Wellington Street

Wednesday, 27 February 2019 13:51

The City of Woodstock denied a request from Scotch and Lace to operate their popular store front on Wellington Street.

WOODSTOCK - A popular business in Woodstock is going to have to move by the end of April.

The building that Scotch and Lace has been using for the past two years has been sold and they found a new location that would have worked for their business. The store is owned by friends Marnie Kramer and Alicia Hummell. Kramer says they wanted to re-locate their business to a house on Wellington Street.

"We want to stay in a house because that has become our brand and we could only find one house that is currently available in the market and it is one lot off the current zoning, which is a C-3 zoning for retail, so we didn't think we were going to the City for that big of a request, like one house difference."

Council denied their request because it didn't mesh with the City's official plan. Kramer admits they are frustrated with the decision.

"It was very evident it had nothing to do with the zone change, it was the City and the BIA trying to force us downtown and I feel very strongly that was what was going on and the funny thing is we are BIA where we currently are on Princess Street and they do not recognize that, they do not support us, so yeah we were pretty disappointed with the decision."

Mayor Trevor Birtch explains why the request was denied by the City.

"With the discussion that took place, both at the planning meeting and at City council on Thursday night, it was generally felt by those who voted against the application that parking was a significant draw back for that particular property, it was a little bit further away from the central district, so a little further away from the municipal parking lots. We are going through a Downtown revitalization plan right where we are looking at more ways to try and attract more businesses to the central core, so this could have been seen as a step backwards for the Downtown core."

Kramer says the parking is not an issue at what would have been the new location and she notes the store brings a lot of money to the City and they have a lot of out of town customers who spend at other locations when they visit.

"We love the City, we love our customers, we want to continue to do more business here, we are very community minded, we love and live local and we want to continue to do that and we want to continue to do that with a shop out of a house."

The City council vote was close, 3-2 with councillor Jerry Acchione not voting because he declared a conflict of interest because he claimed that Scotch and Lace is a business associate of his internet show, Your Oxford and that Scotch and Lace had dressed his wife Sarah for a couple of episodes.