Church Street Goes Bust!

By in Other Entertainment

In Part 1 of our series about Church Street, we talk about the “festival marketplace” to be built across from KIA Center except it’s been a decade since it was first announced. In Part 2 of our series, we showed all the closed clubs and restaurants on the north side of Church Street between Garland Avenue and Orange Avenue. In Part 3 of our series today, we view the south side of Church Street and find it to be better than the north side. Beginning at Garland Avenue and heading east, we find the Cheyenne Saloon building. Once part of the Church Street Station complex, it appears to still be operational and being used as event rental space. STATUS: OPEN WHEN RENTED
From 1974 until the late 90’s, Church Street Station was thee nightlife destination in Orlando. Offering multiple bars and clubs for one cover charge, Church Street would get packed nightly. When Disney saw so many guests leaving property every night for here, they built Pleasure Island. That hit Church Street Station hard. When Universal Studios did the same with CityWalk, it pretty much shut Church Street Station down. The Bumby Arcade building was once home to Rosie O’Grady’s Good Time Emporium. It’s been idle for more than 25 years. We posted in February, 2022 that a food hall was coming here. Now, more than 4 years later, no food hall. STATUS: PERMANENTLY CLOSED
Continuing east, the Bumby Block building and most-recently home to Hamburger Mary’s restaurant. STATUS: PERMANENTLY CLOSED
Crossing the tracks. The northbound SunRail station is on the left; the southbound station is just beyond the next cross street.
Crossing the tracks, a bar called Ferg’s Depot was the last tenant in this building. And this building was actually a train station built in 1889 for the Atlantic Coast Railroad. STATUS: PERMANENTLY CLOSED
One ray of sunshine on the south side of Church Street is here in Church Street Plaza. There are several restaurants here even though Five Guys and Hooters are long gone. STATUS: OPEN
And within the same plaza, a few more restaurants. STATUS: OPEN
Continuing east, we pass a parking garage and office building which culminates here at the corner of Orange Avenue where we find Solita Tacos & Margaritas. It replaced the Wahlburger’s restaurant that was once here. STATUS: OPEN. So as you can see from our articles, Church Street is in horrible shape overall with the north side of the street bleak and the south side only marginally better. The city’s vision for the street is to eliminate curbs and add brick pavers. Seriously? Unless there are businesses along both sides of the road, no one is going to care there are no curbs and no one is going to hang-out here.