On North Carlisle street, the scene has changed over the last year. Where an abandoned Chinese food restaurant once stood, new businesses now stand in their place.
At the beginning of the semester, Masters Bar and Restaurant opened with great excitement, drawing students to a different side of campus for night life. Now local business owners are hoping that their businesses, which reside across the street, will continue to bring student life over.
Ray Wilson is a self-proclaimed businessman, saying he has been a bartender for over a decade, and worked in the food industry for 22 years. His establishment which is directly on the corner of Oxford and Carlisle is Ray’s Lunch Box, a deli-style restaurant which will serve a variety of soups, salads and sandwiches. Temple Update caught up with Ray and asked him how his restaurant will be integrated with the residents and students here.
“You see a lot of businesses when they have left overs they throw them out, well we don’t want to do that,” Wilson said. “When we have extra, we have plenty of extra, we want to send it right to the homeless shelter in our area. We want to be a part of this community.”
Just next door, John Byrne says his agency is helping students find houses. Govberg Realty is a fully licensed brokerage with apartments and houses all over campus. We met up with John and some of the Govberg team where we got to ask him about his thoughts on off-campus life expanding. John said he has confidence that development south of Temple’s campus won’t be slowing down soon. Byrne told Temple Update:
“Down here is a little less congested, I mean a little bit of the older students are coming down this way…it’s not part of the original boom with the off-campus market. There’s a lot of blocks that are still down here that are historically preserved.”
With food and housing becoming available, the new business owners hope that students will be steady to follow.
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