They are at 50 Suffolk St, second floor (right across from Vincent’s).

Couple of things- focusing one your one theory as to what Worcester or the businesses or the government did wrong missed the big picture.

Every restaurant closing has to do with cost of doing business, current and projected. There are a lot of factors that go into it. Most important is the cost to open your doors- Rent, utilities, food cost. All three of these categories have gone up in the past few years for factors outside of most businesses to control.

You need to be good at what you do to stay open for a long time, and enough of an attraction for return customers. That means you need to have something your competitors don’t have as a hook. A lot of the places that are closing now all had similar menus and atmospheres, and all operated in close proximity to each other. Add in The Mercantile and Ruth Chris Steakhouse opening nearby (both with giant footprints and owned by restaurant groups), and smaller places can’t compete unless customers turn out for them.

If their landlord raised their rent, or they had the opportunity to sell, or they didn’t like the uncertainty of operating near the ballpark, then they saw the chance to get out when they could and get a return on their investment before they ran out of money.

But let’s face it- Worcester has had a lot of restaurants with similar themes open up in the last decade. There will be closings when customers shift to new places, or add another few places to their regular choices. Also, as long time Worcester residents get priced out of housing, their local favorites will suffer when the transplants from the Boston suburbs move here and find their own favorites.

If you want to survive, be unique and good at what you do. Also, own your place if you can, or lock in a long term lease at favorable rates that won’t change when the landlord decides to cash in on the Worcester “Renaissance.”

Housing supply is the main factor. Holden and the surrounding towns have been steadily growing and adding new housing stock as people are priced out of the Boston area. These towns have plenty of undeveloped land to build single family houses compared to other towns to the east, or a city like Worcester.

New subdivisions are going up rapidly, and that’s keeping the price of previously built houses down. Once they stop building, prices will start to escalate.

This is the progress of your “not all plantations” argument. All of these points are demonstrably false, as outlined in many of the books I’ve posted previously.

❌ The area was called Quinsigamond Plantation even before the Europeans settled here. —> ❌Let me try to explain this very clearly: before these British people, a subset of Europeans, settled on the land, they were already calling it Quinsigamond Plantation. —> ❌Therefore, this means that the word "plantation" was applied to the area by someone well before there was slavery in the area, so it is impossible that the name is derived in any way from slavery. We also know that "plantation' was a term that was generally used for farms before the 1800s.

Actual history: The Europeans who settled here were English colonists from Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay Colonies. There was no previous use of the word Plantation in Quinsigamond prior to colonization here. The only people here were Nipmuc and other native tribes. They certainly weren’t using the word plantation.

Multiple tribes were attacked and sold into slavery by the colonists. The first mass sale of Pequots happened in 1637. Some were kept domestically, most were sold to sugar plantations in the Caribbean. Also, the first slave auction in the colonies happened in 1619 in Virginia. Plantations weren’t “just farms” until 1800, when things magically changed in your unsourced Wikipedia article.

Sources: Our Beloved Kin - Lisa Brooks This Land Is Their Land - David J. Silverman

This is a small symbolic change with minor implications. Manufacturing a ton of outrage and defending plantations illuminates the mindset of its proponents.

Ultimately we should work on larger structural changes to benefit people whose families have been damaged by slavery and plantations, but I’m pretty sure you aren’t ready for that conversation.

Why did the first two colonial settlements at Quinsigamond fail?

Your original argument was that the name Plantation was harmless in the context of Worcester history.

I repeatedly demonstrated the problems with your assumptions based off of cursory Google searches. To do so, I pointed out historical events you hadn’t googled yet.

Now you keep moving the goalposts in an attempt to save face by saying I want to change lots of place names. I don’t. Your misdirection is not working.

If you would care to educate yourself about the colonial history of enslavement I recommend the following books I’ve read on the subject:

Our Beloved Kin - Lisa Brooks This Land Is Their Land - David Silverman The Other Slavery - Andrés Reséndez The Indian Slave Trade - Alan Gallay

And if you’re not inclined to read a book, Frank James’ article “A National Day of Mourning” might help get the points I’m making across in less time.

And for the record, it’s a People’s History of the United States, not a People’s History of America. If you had read that book, maybe you might not have shown your ignorance of colonial history on a public forum. Zinn does briefly cover Massachusetts colonial history in the first chapter.

Stop googling historical facts to support a weak argument.

Worcester’s first settlement was 1673, not 1637 like your Wikipedia article states.

You know what did happen in the area in 1637? English colonists started the Pequot War, and either killed or enslaved the Pequots, wiping out the tribe.

Quinsigamond is the Nipmuc name of the lake. Plantation was added by the English settlers. Those same settlers who killed and stole all this land from its original inhabitants.

Your original argument is that Plantation shouldn’t be an offensive name here in Worcester, thanks to five minutes of googling that introduced you to the words Quinsigamond Plantation.

I’ve pointed out the main flaw in your argument, namely that English colonists here in Worcester and Massachusetts actively enslaved Nipmuc people, (also Pequots, Narragansetts, Wampanoags, etc.) They were sold to large sugar plantations in the Caribbean.

So sure, a Pilgrim called his farm a plantation, and you, the amateur Google historian thinks that was harmless, not one of the ‘bad plantations’. But that same Pilgrim also stole that land and either killed or enslaved the original inhabitants, or waited for them to die from an imported European disease so he could have that ‘plantation.’

You can’t understand history from 5 minutes of Google searches. Read some books instead.

While you’re at it, Google Indian Slavery in New England. And English plantations in the Caribbean.

See if any of that happened before English settlements in Quinsigamond.

Where do you think the colonists who started the Massachusetts Bay Colony and Plymouth Colony came from?

I’ll wait while you Google it.

The British are Europeans. They were the colonists who settled here and added Plantation to the Nipmuc name Quinsigamond.

You can keep repeating the stuff you googled. Doesn’t mean you are correct.

If however you can produce the linguistic derivation of the word Plantation and show originated in the Algonquian languages, then maybe you have a point.

I won’t hold my breath waiting for that moment though.

Until then, the issue is the word Plantation.

You can’t even comprehend the source you quoted.

“Nipmuc history in what is now Worcester County predates any written records. During the 1600’s, the original inhabitants of Worcester dwelled principally in three locations, Pakachoag, Tataesset (Tatnuck), and Wigwam Hill (N. Lake Ave.). In 1667, four men, among them, Daniel Gookin, surveyed the land the English called Quinsigamond Plantation.”

Are you saying Plantation was a Nipmuc word?

Back in 2007 Worcester started the process to rename Central St. to MLK Jr. Boulevard. It’s funny how a lot of the arguments against renaming Plantation St. are echoes from opposition to creating MLK Jr. Boulevard. The talking point about “cost” of changing personal info being unfair is identical.

Quinsigamond Plantation was part of the Trans Atlantic Slave trade. Nipmuc and Wampanoags were imprisoned and enslaved during and after King Philip’s War. Many of them were peaceful Christian converts who had no connection to the war, and were rounded up by angry and scared colonists (who then profited from taking their lands).

I recommend “Our Beloved Kin” by Lisa Brooks for an excellent and detailed retelling of that conflict.

Pushing back against slavery is a Worcester historical tradition. There is a long history of abolitionist activism in Worcester, along with it being a stop in the Underground Railroad. This follows our history.

Ultimately this is a small and minor symbolic change. But language does matter. Ultimately, it will be a minor inconvenience when it does change.

Many Nipmuc and Wampanoags were sold into slavery during the colonial years, especially in the aftermath of King Philip’s War.

Quinsigamond is the Nipmuc name for the lake.