If you take a drive around Harvard Square at night, it’s clear there is not the same buzz. Harvard Square, normally packed with students and those visiting from out of town, has been hit especially hard during the coronavirus pandemic.
Eleven months of the coronavirus pandemic have driven some Harvard Square landmark spots out of business, and around another hundred may never reopen, according to a local business association.
After a two-alarm fire damaged Harvard Square’s Border Cafe in December 2019, the Tex-Mex restaurant closed its original Church Street location with the intent to reopen. Now, it appears that reopening will never come.
A bit more than a year ago, one of the most popular restaurants in Cambridge’s Harvard Square was hit by a fire and has remain closed ever since. Now we are hearing that it is gone for good.
Border Cafe, a longtime Harvard Square staple with music always playing and the smell of charred meat wafting from the premises, has permanently closed as “the pain from the pandemic continues,” in Cambridge and across the region.
As students trickle back into Cambridge for the spring semester, Harvard Square business owners said they are hoping to see sales pick back up after a challenging year and quiet winter break.
A former Harvard dormitory building that today houses Harvard Square staples like Pokeworks and OTTO Pizza was purchased last month by Gazit Horizons, Inc. for $45 million.
Spyce, a fast-casual eatery that serves bowls and salads engineered by an automated kitchen, celebrated the opening of its Harvard Square location on Wednesday.
In the old days, pre-pandemic, the line in the brick-walled basement bar of Grendel’s Den would have consisted of young customers waiting to have their ID cards checked.
These days, says owner Kari Kuelzer, it’s made up of staff members getting checked for the coronavirus.
Call it the new and improved Spyce: When the second location of the fast casual restaurant opens Wednesday in Harvard Square, it will debut with an updated version of the automated kitchen that first made a splash more than two years ago.