Green Gates restaurant closure leaves dozens of couples in a panic
Winnipeg Free Press
Monday, March 6th, 2006
By Dan Lett
DOZENS of engaged couples are scrambling to find new wedding venues after the sudden closure of Green Gates restaurant.
More than 90 weddings were planned this year before the grand estate in Headingley closed without warning two weeks ago.
Hotel ballrooms and some of the larger restaurants in town are reporting frantic calls from anxious brides and grooms who are now without a venue. Some are moving their receptions to mid-week dates, with weekends at many facilities completely booked.
"It's really quite crazy," said Paul Haverstock, director of catering for the Fort Garry Hotel. "You've got photographers, florists, hairdressers and frantic brides all calling to try and reschedule weddings."
Amanda Malboeuf remembers sitting in the office of the wedding planner at Green Gates on Feb. 23, finalizing the menu and making last-minute suggestions for her wedding cake.
Her wedding, seven months in the planning, was scheduled for March 18. "There was no indication of any trouble," said Malboeuf, 23, of her last visit to Green Gates. "We made arrangements to talk again a few days before the wedding. Everything seemed to be fine."
Unknown to Malboeuf, later that same day a simmering financial disaster at Green Gates finally boiled over. Payroll for the more than 70 staff at the stately dining room and conference centre bounced, and many walked off the job.
The restaurant posted a notice on its doors and recorded a message on its telephone answering service indicating a sewage backup had forced a temporary closure.
By the following Tuesday, however, word had spread to Malboeuf's wedding party that the restaurant was closed indefinitely.
"I didn't sleep at all," the University of Manitoba science student said.
"It didn't seem to be real what was happening. I was in tears quite a bit because it was pretty overwhelming."
Malboeuf and her fiancé, fellow student Jon Diggle, 25, are now looking for other venues in the hope of holding their nuptials the same weekend. The task before them is daunting.
Haverstock, the Fort Garry caterer, said Green Gates' closure has forced the Fort Garry to try to schedule mid-week weddings, something unheard of before the collapse.
Many of the couples now scrambling to find a new venue claim they called the restaurant immediately after the first stories about financial problems began to appear. In almost all instances, the couples said they were told there was no chance the restaurant was going to close.
"The wedding planner at Green Gates told me in January there was nothing to worry about," said Tara Glover, 27, who planned to marry fiancé Luc Barnabe on March 11.
Glover said staff at Green Gates told her the restaurant's owners had personally guaranteed the weddings would go ahead as scheduled regardless of what happened to the building and property in the foreclosure
The bad news for Green Gates started last month when Astra Credit Union announced it was foreclosing on Greener Pastures Inc., a company controlled by entrepreneur David Wolinsky that owns the land and buildings on Roblin Boulevard in Headingley. Astra claims Greener Pastures defaulted on about $1.7 million in loans and lines of credit.
Shortly after Astra started the foreclosure, word spread the restaurant was experiencing financial difficulties of its own. The restaurant was operated by GGCH Holdings Inc., a related but separate company. A third company, GGCH Conference Centre Inc., operated the pavilion behind the main restaurant where all the weddings were held.
Allan Godfrey, chief financial officer at Astra Credit Union, said they were informed last week the restaurant operation had been abandoned and the landlord, Greener Pastures, did not have the resources to secure the land and buildings.
Astra took immediate steps to change the locks and alarm codes and post a security guard to ensure the property did not fall into disrepair or suffer vandalism, Godfrey said.
However, Astra has no role to play in finding someone to operate the restaurant, he added. The credit union is primarily concerned with completing foreclosure on the land and building, finding a new owner and covering most of its debts, he said.
Barring a last-minute deal to refinance the debt or pay off the mortgage, the foreclosure could take two months or more to complete, Godfrey said.
dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca