Paradiso Is Latest Square Spot to Close

Higher rent prices have led to yet another store closing in Harvard Square, as the popular eatery Caffe Paradiso shut its doors for the last time earlier this month.

Oscar De Stefano, Paradiso’s owner since it opened 23 years ago, said that the reason his cafe closed was that he couldn’t keep up with his new lease agreement.

“The renegotiation went on behalf of the landlord, and the flow of traffic wasn’t there to support the new conditions,” De Stefano said.

He added that landlords seem to pay more attention to cutting costs than to making sure businesses can afford the rent.

“They respond to banks,” he said. “And banks have no feelings.”

De Stefano pointed to what he saw as stagnant tourist levels as the explanation behind the demise of many older establishments.

“In the 80s it was great and in the 90s it was better,” he explained. “But from 2001 on, it’s been a real struggle to keep up with the times.”

Caffe Paradiso is just the latest in a string of independent store closings in Harvard Square. The Greenhouse Coffee Shop and Restaurant closed in April after nearly 30 years of serving the Harvard Square community. Ferranti-Dege Photographic Store, which opened in the Square in 1955, was forced to close last October.

But Denise A. Jillson, the executive director of the Harvard Square Business Association—an advocacy group that any Harvard Square business, from local independents to national chains, can join—thinks the recent closings are just part of a normal cycle of the continually changing face of the Square.

“If you look at who has joined our association in the last month, it’s all tiny businesses,” she said.

While neither Caffe Paradiso nor Greenhouse were members, Jillson said that if De Stefano had come to them and asked for help in renegotiating the lease, they would have done their best to keep Paradiso in business.

“We see the value of local independents staying in the square,” she said. “Paradiso was a gem with a loyal following and we feel badly that they’re no longer here.”

While De Stefano has come to accept his retirement and looks forward to “less day-to-day responsibility,” the restaurateur also wonders whether changing social patterns may have added to his cafe’s demise.

“It used to be two kids would come in and one would pay for both,” he explains. “Then the next day they’d be back and the other would pay. These days everyone pays for themselves, and you don’t want to have to pay for coffee everyday.”

—Staff writer Nathan C. Strauss can be reached at strauss@fas.harvard.edu.