For 42 years, Maria and Alexandru Sandu have been greeting customers, scooping out coriander and cumin and tempting regulars with sweet pieces of baklava. But the future of their popular Kensington Market shop Reg Natural Food is now uncertain.

Alexandru said the landlord is raising the rent by about 20 per cent, which they can’t afford and they face shutting their doors.

“We are in trouble,” he said. “We have very good customers. They are crying that we are forced to go.”

Landlord Sheldon Gold did not want to discuss the details of the situation, calling it a “private matter.”

“Operating costs rise, their lease has provision for increase in operating costs,” he said.

Asked if the increase was due to a hike in property taxes he said it’s the “the biggest single element.”

Maria, who was busy serving up Turkish delight in front of a counter of jars of spices in the store, on Tuesday, directed questions to her husband. Long-time customer Leslie Fritz has started a GoFundMe crowdsourcing campaign for the couple, calling the 78-year-old “the guardian of Baldwin Street.”

“They’re an integral part of Kensington Market and I just can’t imagine the neighbourhood without them,” Fritz said. “Everybody calls her mommy, she calls everybody else mommy too.”

Fritz said the Sandus are just the latest small business owners to be forced out of the neighbourhood because of increased rent and property taxes, and she’s still waiting on a heritage conservation district plan from city hall.

According to the city website, the planning phase is supposed to start this spring, with the goal of developing policies and guidelines to conserve the heritage value of the neighbourhood.

Fritz said she hopes to raise enough with the GoFundMe to keep the couple in their store for another year, and intends it as “a thank you, an appreciation from all of us in the neighbourhood, in the market, the people who love her.”

“All the money goes to Maria, if she wants to retire and buy herself a fur coat and go to Disneyland, she could do that,” she said.

The couple came to Canada from Romania in the 1970s, Alexandru said. He wanted to sell spices because they’re “indispensable,” and “always in the kitchen,” taking over from a store that sold chicken.

Their daughter Daniela Cahuas said the shop is her mother’s “retirement place,” and she wants to stay connected to her community.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

“Otherwise she’d be at home. She doesn’t have the language, she would be totally devastated,” Cahuas said.

“She’ll die at the store and she’ll die very happy.”