Sunday was Big Sky Café’s last day serving up meals along Broad Street.
“It's been an iconic downtown restaurant for many decades, and it was a place where I had one of my favorite personal salads," Bettina Swigger, Downtown SLO CEO said. "So I will miss it dearly. But we also know that there is a healthy churn of businesses opening and closing downtown.”
Since January of this year, Swigger says 16 businesses have closed, but another 23 have opened.
“Overall, our vacancy rate downtown is at about 8% and that's been about where it's been for the last few months," Swigger added. “It's always really easy to be sad when we hear bad news, but I also want to draw very close attention to the fact that there are new businesses opening downtown all the time and there are creative and resilient people who have maybe put in decades of service to our downtown economy, and they deserve to have a little bit of rest as well.”
When one door closes, another one opens. Right next door to what used to be Big Sky Cafe, Gage Mathews is opening up his piercing shop - The Gold Bar.
“I like the culture here, the people," Mathews complimented. "It's close enough to the beach where I can still enjoy the surf and, you know, cut the trees, the hiking. Everything about this area is just what I wanted.”
This is Gage's fifth piercing shop but his first in San Luis Obispo County. He says he’s always wanted to bring high-end body jewelry to the Central Coast.
Bettina Swigger noted while the changes are sad, there are influxes of businesses still coming into the heart of town, and its important to pay a visit to our local success stories.
We reached out to the owner of Big Sky Cafe who told us he’ll be commenting more on the restaurant’s closure in the coming days.
