Walk down King Street West this summer and the block looks different than it did in the spring. The Horn of Plenty sign is gone. In its place, a butcher shop and restaurant occupy a building most longtime residents still call "the old theatre," even though nobody under sixty remembers it screening a film. Next door, the tiny shop that used to be Cumbrae's original Dundas location has been turning into something else entirely: a gelato counter.
Both storefronts belong to the same owner. He has held one of them since 1999.
A Theatre, Then a Grocer, Now a Butcher Shop
The building at 24 King Street West started life as the Queen's Theatre in 1921. It was renamed the Majestic in 1929, and the Dundas Museum's own historical record traces the site back further still, through a shoemaker's shop and a 1882 fire that took out eight structures on that stretch of King before rebuilding began. For the last four decades, though, most people in Dundas knew it as home to The Horn of Plenty, the organic grocer that ran there for more than 40 years before closing its doors in 2024.
That closure is the hinge this whole story turns on.
The Wait Next Door
In 1999, Cumbrae's founder Stephen Alexander bought a tiny corner shop at 26 King Street West, right beside the Majestic Theatre building. It was only the second store he had ever purchased for the business, a small butcher counter that stayed small for a quarter century while the flagship business grew elsewhere. Alexander reportedly had renovation plans drawn up for that little shop more than once. Each time, the constraint wasn't money or design. It was square footage. The building next door wasn't his.
That changed when The Horn of Plenty closed in 2024. Alexander purchased the historic Majestic Theatre building, and what had been a twenty-five-year holding pattern turned into an active build. The new 6,000-square-foot flagship opened at 24 King Street West in June 2026, nearly three decades after Alexander first put down roots on this exact corner.
For a resident walking past, the timeline matters more than the square footage. This wasn't a chain moving in on short notice. It was one owner, one block, and a very long wait for the right building to come open.
What Happens to the Old Shop
Here's the detail that separates this from a typical retail swap. Alexander didn't vacate the original 26 King Street West shop once the new flagship opened. He's converting it into La Valle, a gelato shop named for the Dundas Valley, which was on track to open by the end of July, meaning it should already be scooping by the time most residents read this.
That's a net addition to the block, not a consolidation. Downtown Dundas isn't losing a storefront to make room for a bigger one. It's gaining a second business in the space the first one used to occupy.
| Address | Through 2024 | Summer 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| 24 King St W | Historic Majestic Theatre building; most recently The Horn of Plenty, closed after 40+ years | New 6,000 sq ft Cumbrae's flagship, butcher shop and sit-down restaurant |
| 26 King St W | Original small Cumbrae's counter, open since 1999 | Converting to La Valle, an artisanal gelato shop |
Five Names, One Sentence
Alexander has been direct about why he's making this move now rather than quietly retiring the old shop. In his words, Cumbrae's is trying to build Dundas into a food destination for the Hamilton, Ancaster and Burlington areas. He named the businesses he sees as part of that shift specifically:
- Cumbrae's
- Detour
- Dear Grain
- Picone's Fine Foods
- Pinbones Fish Market
That's not a vague nod to "the local food scene." It's a named list from the person opening the largest new storefront on the street, and it tells you the growth here is clustered rather than scattered across town. These businesses aren't competing to be the one destination. They're operating as a set, which changes how a resident might treat a Saturday afternoon on King Street. One stop for coffee at Detour, another for bread from Dear Grain, another for fish at Pinbones, all within a short walk of each other rather than a drive across Dundas.
None of this is starting from zero. Quatrefoil, the Michelin-recognized spot serving contemporary French plates, and Betula, the chef-driven restaurant known for its seasonal menu, were already giving Dundas a reputation for food worth a special trip before Cumbrae's ever broke ground on the flagship. What's changed is the density along King Street West specifically, not the overall quality bar for the town.
The Route This Actually Changes
For someone who already lives in Dundas, the practical shift is smaller than the press coverage suggests but still real. If your Saturday already includes a coffee run to Detour or a stop for produce, you now have a reason to extend that loop rather than drive it separately. Pick up cuts at the new Cumbrae's counter, grab bread from Dear Grain, and close the loop with gelato at La Valle instead of driving to a different part of town for dessert.
The timing lines up with what the Downtown Dundas BIA has already built into the summer calendar. Their Chalk Dundas Live and Local programming runs something every Saturday through the season, and the district's Forever Local gift card already connects more than 40 shops and restaurants under one program. A new food anchor on King Street doesn't compete with that structure. It gives people one more reason to stay on foot once they're already downtown for the Saturday program.
Reading the Corner, Not Just the Storefront
The easy version of this story is "new butcher shop opens in Dundas." The version that actually tells you something is that a single owner sat on a corner lot for twenty-seven years, waited for the one adjacent property that would let him expand properly, and then chose to keep both storefronts running rather than close the smaller one down. That's a specific bet on King Street West holding its value as a walkable food corridor, made by someone who has had a stake in that corner since 1999.
Buildings like the old Majestic Theatre don't get renovated on a whim. In a town that has kept its downtown core largely intact through more than a century of turnover, the way a hundred-year-old building gets reused says more about where the neighborhood is headed than any single opening ever could.
If you're watching how downtown Dundas continues to change, block by block, that's exactly the kind of read we bring to every property conversation at Kevin, Alicia & Associates. Book a property valuation with our team when you're ready to talk about what these shifts mean for your own corner of Dundas.
