May 1, 20241 yr small businesses to visit in lakewood — https://www.instagram.com/reel/C55zLApunNY/?igsh=c2NrdHJqdjFmdjFz
May 11, 20241 yr largest target overstock in the state — krazy bins parma/krazy racks twinsburg https://www.instagram.com/reel/C6Qzsp4LqYg/?igsh=MWg2bWNiM2VwZWVxMA==
June 23, 2024Jun 23 tremont vintage — https://www.instagram.com/reel/C7uzPhHpwbo/?igsh=dmNxc3Y1amlkY3E1
July 7, 2024Jul 7 Saks Fifth Avenue parent Co. is purchasing Neiman Marcus, and Amazon is involved too.
July 9, 2024Jul 9 On 7/7/2024 at 12:31 PM, osu87 said: Saks Fifth Avenue parent Co. is purchasing Neiman Marcus, and Amazon is involved too. I hate purchases like this. They never work out long term.
July 15, 2024Jul 15 The North Face at Eton is closing after 15 years on August 14th, according to a sign in front of the store. The outlet at Aurora Farms is not affected.
July 15, 2024Jul 15 ^ They had a good run. At the end of the day, I guess you can only sell so many zip-up vests to all the yoga-moms from Shaker to Chagrin. My hovercraft is full of eels
July 15, 2024Jul 15 2 hours ago, roman totale XVII said: ^ They had a good run. At the end of the day, I guess you can only sell so many zip-up vests to all the yoga-moms from Shaker to Chagrin. They wouldn't wear North Face... They've moved on. But, another loss to the local scene for a store other cities our size and smaller have.
July 16, 2024Jul 16 ^ yeah thats not good, but tbh north face has faded out of style a bit. it wasnt that good quality to start with imo, not that it was bad.
July 24, 2024Jul 24 loganberry books — https://www.instagram.com/reel/C8ZYo8GASq_/?igsh=MWVzd3V5em01bDVsdg==
July 27, 2024Jul 27 sad news — Fridrich Bicycle to Permanently Close at the End of August After nearly 150 years in business, Cleveland's oldest bike shop will permanently close next month By Vince Grzegorek on Fri, Jul 26, 2024 more: https://www.clevescene.com/news/fridrich-bicycle-to-permanently-close-at-the-end-of-august-44798954 Mark Oprea — After nearly a century-and-a-half in business, Fridrich Bicycle, Cleveland's oldest continuously-owned bike shop will be going out of business this year.
August 13, 2024Aug 13 i dk if this affects ne ohio macys — looks like its change, but not all bad news — Apartments, hockey rinks and Amazon warehouses: Macy’s closures will set off a wave of change at shopping malls PUBLISHED MON, AUG 12 202410:34 AM EDTUPDATED MON, AUG 12 20241:12 PM EDT Melissa Repko@IN/MELISSA-REPKO@MELISSA_REPKO KEY POINTS Macy’s will set off a wave of change at malls, as it closes about 150 namesake stores across the country by early 2027. The department store operator has long been a mall anchor, with stores that range between 200,000 and 225,000 square feet. Mall owners could convert the former Macy’s boxes into smaller retail spaces or make more significant changes, such as adding apartments or demolishing the mall for a completely new development. more: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/08/12/macys-store-closures-will-change-malls.html
August 13, 2024Aug 13 Sounds like the same death spiral as Sears parasite owners. Selling off real estate assets for peanuts, slowly flushing the brand. Quote Macy’s owns the majority of its namesake stores. That dates back to when mall owners would give department stores a space to draw shoppers and make money by charging other retailers rent.
August 13, 2024Aug 13 "Macy’s closures will ultimately be a good thing for many malls and customers..." Jesus, the mental gymnastics with that statement.
August 13, 2024Aug 13 Supposedly the Macy's at Great Northern is closing in January of next year. Oddly enough they are opening a new small format one at the old BBB spot by Crocker Park.
August 20, 2024Aug 20 Hopefully the next step is to sell all their grocery stores to Meijer or, better yet, Wegmans! Giant Eagle agrees to sell all GetGo locations: What does that mean for the myPerks program? https://www.wkyc.com/article/news/local/ohio/giant-eagle-sells-get-go-locations-couche-tard-company/95-3216fe0f-6405-4bca-93d3-9a57360b724f
August 20, 2024Aug 20 The Cleveland Retail thread never includes new stores opening just closures and sadness.
August 20, 2024Aug 20 28 minutes ago, MyPhoneDead said: The Cleveland Retail thread never includes new stores opening just closures and sadness. "just closures and sadness" and east side shopping center store relocations...
August 21, 2024Aug 21 23 hours ago, eyehrtfood said: "just closures and sadness" and east side shopping center store relocations... This especially.
October 7, 2024Oct 7 Over the weekend, a fellow downtown resident told me something I wasn’t quite prepared to believe, but after talking to a store associate earlier today, appears to be true. The downtown Heinens has sold the upper level of the rotunda to the 9. What the hotel has planned for that space, I don’t know. The bar will close and the beer and wines section will “somehow” be moved downstairs. All this will happen “sooner, rather than later.” That’s all I know. My hovercraft is full of eels
October 8, 2024Oct 8 check out the browsing room bookstore in the galleria — 👍 https://www.instagram.com/reel/DArEO--pZkC/?igsh=dzI5aGV6YXV4cXBu
October 8, 2024Oct 8 ^^^^^^^^^^ 🙌👍🏽 On 8/20/2024 at 11:36 AM, MyPhoneDead said: The Cleveland Retail thread never includes new stores opening just closures and sadness.
October 8, 2024Oct 8 On 10/7/2024 at 7:27 PM, roman totale XVII said: Over the weekend, a fellow downtown resident told me something I wasn’t quite prepared to believe, but after talking to a store associate earlier today, appears to be true. The downtown Heinens has sold the upper level of the rotunda to the 9. What the hotel has planned for that space, I don’t know. The bar will close and the beer and wines section will “somehow” be moved downstairs. All this will happen “sooner, rather than later.” That’s all I know. During previous visits, a few lights that ringed the bottom of the skylight were flickering and in need of replacement. Today at lunchtime, the second floor area was still open, but I noticed the lights ringing the outer edge of the skylight/dome were all off. clevelandskyscrapers.com Cleveland Skyscrapers on Instagram
October 9, 2024Oct 9 It takes much more these days to support brick and mortar then it did 15 years ago. As I've said before, the number on critical mass is much greater than then the 20k we heard thrown around several years ago. Unless you already had momentum in a retail corridor pre-covid.
October 9, 2024Oct 9 I’ve heard this about Heinen’s as well. It’s disappointing but I also feel like ever since COVID they have not been running the store as well as at the beginning and the upstairs area was the same. They need to change some things and if consolidating to one floor will help that I guess I’m ok with it, although I’m not quite sure how they plan to do it. I really wish they would utilize the old coffee shop space for something like Mitchell’s.
October 9, 2024Oct 9 Before heading to the ballgame last Saturday, we stopped in at around 11:30 am. Only a handful of people were in there. The hot food section was not yet open. Is it not open on the weekend? I figured there would be more activity with 30K+ people in the vicinity. Edited October 9, 2024Oct 9 by LibertyBlvd
October 9, 2024Oct 9 On 10/7/2024 at 7:27 PM, roman totale XVII said: Over the weekend, a fellow downtown resident told me something I wasn’t quite prepared to believe, but after talking to a store associate earlier today, appears to be true. The downtown Heinens has sold the upper level of the rotunda to the 9. What the hotel has planned for that space, I don’t know. The bar will close and the beer and wines section will “somehow” be moved downstairs. All this will happen “sooner, rather than later.” That’s all I know. I'm actually optimistic about this. The 9 owners have been magnificent at creating spaces that are useful, quality and draw a crowd.
October 9, 2024Oct 9 5 hours ago, LibertyBlvd said: Before heading to the ballgame last Saturday, we stopped in at around 11:30 am. Only a handful of people were in there. The hot food section was not yet open. I figured there would be more activity with 30K+ people in the vicinity. I would imagine that downtown residents prefer to get food delivered than carry it from the stores or even remote parking spaces.
October 9, 2024Oct 9 1 hour ago, E Rocc said: I would imagine that downtown residents prefer to get food delivered than carry it from the stores or even remote parking spaces. I live downtown about 150 feet from the Heinen's. The issue with the Heinen's downtown is that its so expensive and has significantly less options than a comparable store. If I could do all of my grocery shopping there I absolutely would. I would get one of those little carts and stop by whenever I needed. Most folks in the neighborhood probably would as well. For me it's relegated to beer/wine runs or grabbing something real quick on my way to someone's house. Also, their prepared foods have always disappointed so I stopped trying.
October 9, 2024Oct 9 2 hours ago, Zagapi said: I live downtown about 150 feet from the Heinen's. The issue with the Heinen's downtown is that its so expensive and has significantly less options than a comparable store. If I could do all of my grocery shopping there I absolutely would. I would get one of those little carts and stop by whenever I needed. Most folks in the neighborhood probably would as well. For me it's relegated to beer/wine runs or grabbing something real quick on my way to someone's house. Also, their prepared foods have always disappointed so I stopped trying. Are their prices more expensive than other Heinen's stores?
October 10, 2024Oct 10 As I think about it, there was always going to be more required than the 20K residents number (our actual number varies so much that I doubt we ACTUALLY have that). On top of the 20K residents I feel we need to see a significant uptick in non residents visiting Downtown. I'm not saying Cleveland needs to turn into Chicago but we need to get it to where our "busy days" become our normal/light days. How do you do that? Create a downtown that attracts families downtown (both residents and tourists), you can do that by having attractive lakefront attractions and unique things like the recently opened Museum of Illusions. Downtown Cleveland needs to have building landlords that are willing to swallow their pride and open up their retail spaces Downtown to new to market national retailers by offering them an EXTREMELY subsidized rent or free rent for a year, this causes people to want to visit downtown because they can't get that store or experience anywhere else. In an online centric shopping world you need to get extremely creative. The building owners are already getting ZERO dollars right now, why not get some retailers down there by offering subsidies, they literally have nothing to lose. That model was used in Detroit and has been pretty successful.
October 10, 2024Oct 10 Another thing, yes we have a lot of restaurants downtown but I feel we lack in the national names. Even having a Chick-Fil-A downtown, Five Guys, etc. would help. The restaurants we have now are geared towards late night dining, sprinkle in recognizable names to fill in those gaps would create a more consistent amount of foot traffic. As a city, we also need to recognize that Euclid isn't our only street. We have emphasized development of Euclid so much that visiting streets outside of it causes our downtown to seem like a desert town, Superior and Prospect are okay but we can do much better. We need to find ways to attract people to those other areas with creative ideas. Edited October 10, 2024Oct 10 by MyPhoneDead
October 10, 2024Oct 10 17 hours ago, Zagapi said: I live downtown about 150 feet from the Heinen's. The issue with the Heinen's downtown is that its so expensive and has significantly less options than a comparable store. If I could do all of my grocery shopping there I absolutely would. I would get one of those little carts and stop by whenever I needed. Most folks in the neighborhood probably would as well. For me it's relegated to beer/wine runs or grabbing something real quick on my way to someone's house. Also, their prepared foods have always disappointed so I stopped trying. This was my experience as well, more or less. While it was really nice being able to walk to get groceries, the premium I was paying in doing so just wasn't worth it for anything beyond quick top up runs. I don't know why it is so much more expensive, but it is. Higher taxes/rents, inefficiencies compared to other big box stores, it's probably several factors, I don't know, but I do know that if you're living downtown, and you have a car, the rational decision is still to buy your groceries outside of downtown. I'd be curious to know the reason why prices are higher. If it's taxes/rents, policy changes could make a difference, but if it's inefficiency from historic downtown buildings, lack of loading bays, etc, it's not really a problem that can easily be addressed by policy. It could also be something else entirely. Maybe we just need an Aldi to open up downtown, while I'm guessing it would still be cheaper than a traditional Aldi, maybe it wouldn't be quite as egregious as starting with what is already a higher end grocery store. I'm guessing there's a reason though that it seems like only higher end grocery stores open up in denser neighborhoods. Lots of questions.
October 10, 2024Oct 10 I suspect there are different ideas about what downtown should look like depending on who you ask. In my experience, downtown living in most places is a "luxury good" and anything that is handy comes with a "convenience tax," which I'm sure is based on higher costs for the business... but surely also factors in the income of the people nearby. I think our downtown "struggles" because of scale. I am convinced that compact, smaller blocks with smaller-sized retail spaces are more interesting and welcoming. Anytime I've been to any city, neighborhoods like that are where I want to go and experience the most energy. In the places we have like that, like E4th or Ohio City, we do see energy. But a lot of downtown is not like that. The buildings are huge, blocks large, streets wide. It just doesn't feel right. It's definitely fixable but we need more wealthy, creative developers to help reshape the area. Edited October 10, 2024Oct 10 by coneflower
October 10, 2024Oct 10 A few thoughts: It cost $10 million to repurpose the bank into a Heinen's. No idea how that was financed, but that's a big bill for only 27,000 square feet. COVID closures and the looting were quite costly. Related, the subsequent hybrid/remote culture has likely limited necessary walk-ins. Who goes there for lunch these days? CSU students? Retirees? The ghosts of National City and Eton can't help. The lack of parking has always been a serious issue. The store layout may not be conducive to maximizing sales Near its opening, Jeff leveled expectations with profit and emphasized investing in the city was the priority. Well, that sounds nice, but it isn't particularly sustainable longterm. Urban grocery stores are somewhat experimental in some regions and require cities and their populations to be good partners. If a Heinen's invests in the city, then the city and people have, in this case, 15 years to reciprocate before the lease expires: Higher priced goods could reflect it hasn't happened. Perhaps the store is a loss leader to promote the larger suburban ones and its brand. Heinen's is expensive in general, and operating a business downtown is surely more expensive than in University Heights or Highland. Prices absorb costs.
October 10, 2024Oct 10 I wonder if 9th & Euclid was the best location for a grocery store. Would another location have been better?
October 10, 2024Oct 10 1 hour ago, MyPhoneDead said: Another thing, yes we have a lot of restaurants downtown but I feel we lack in the national names. Even having a Chick-Fil-A downtown, Five Guys, etc. would help. The restaurants we have now are geared towards late night dining, sprinkle in recognizable names to fill in those gaps would create a more consistent amount of foot traffic. As a city, we also need to recognize that Euclid isn't our only street. We have emphasized development of Euclid so much that visiting streets outside of it causes our downtown to seem like a desert town, Superior and Prospect are okay but we can do much better. We need to find ways to attract people to those other areas with creative ideas. Well, there is a Shake Shack. Now that Euclid has been transformed, Prospect should be next. That is the the part of downtown that visitors attending events at Progressive Field, RMFH and Wolstein Center are seeing.
October 10, 2024Oct 10 1 hour ago, LibertyBlvd said: I wonder if 9th & Euclid was the best location for a grocery store. Would another location have been better? Is a great location and we are lucky the hometown business has hung in there. Nobody would have blamed if they closed after the one-two gut punch of Covid and the blm riots, looting and destruction the prior admin allowed. - like Geiger’s next door. Hopefully they will continue to right-size offerings at that unique location and customers for a few more years until the elephant across the street gets going and others come on line (e.g., Ohio Savings redo, Project Scarlett, former UCC hq, SomeraRoad…even NY Spaghetti House lot as long promised by Geis?).
October 10, 2024Oct 10 4 hours ago, MyPhoneDead said: As I think about it, there was always going to be more required than the 20K residents number (our actual number varies so much that I doubt we ACTUALLY have that). On top of the 20K residents I feel we need to see a significant uptick in non residents visiting Downtown. I'm not saying Cleveland needs to turn into Chicago but we need to get it to where our "busy days" become our normal/light days. How do you do that? Create a downtown that attracts families downtown (both residents and tourists), you can do that by having attractive lakefront attractions and unique things like the recently opened Museum of Illusions. Downtown Cleveland needs to have building landlords that are willing to swallow their pride and open up their retail spaces Downtown to new to market national retailers by offering them an EXTREMELY subsidized rent or free rent for a year, this causes people to want to visit downtown because they can't get that store or experience anywhere else. In an online centric shopping world you need to get extremely creative. The building owners are already getting ZERO dollars right now, why not get some retailers down there by offering subsidies, they literally have nothing to lose. That model was used in Detroit and has been pretty successful. This has become a little bit of a frustrating issue for me. I feel like the organizations that are meant to be boosters (DCA, etc.) paint too rosey a picture sometimes and set goals and projections and offer reporting that does not always reflect reality. I agree that 20k residents wasn't going be enough residents to support the downtown economy and it never was. Tho that was tha mantra for 15 years. It's to the point where their quarterly reports need to taken with a large grain of salt.
October 10, 2024Oct 10 A few comments above this actually got me thinking. Why does the city focus so much on Euclid? Shouldn’t they be focusing on most of the main streets and line them with businesses? I usually park off of Superior for games and even that street is pretty dead.
October 10, 2024Oct 10 2 hours ago, Whipjacka said: This has become a little bit of a frustrating issue for me. I feel like the organizations that are meant to be boosters (DCA, etc.) paint too rosey a picture sometimes and set goals and projections and offer reporting that does not always reflect reality. I agree that 20k residents wasn't going be enough residents to support the downtown economy and it never was. Tho that was tha mantra for 15 years. It's to the point where their quarterly reports need to taken with a large grain of salt. To be fair, l think the 20,000 number needed to support retail was a valid number pre WFH. After all those brick and morter stores were also counting on downtown offices being filled with potential customers too. Covid changed all that and probably the 20,000 metric too.
October 10, 2024Oct 10 I was going to question how much the city actually focused on Euclid and if there was a specific retail strategy, but lo and behold Google was able to help: Downtown Cleveland Retail Strategy Might be familiar to some, but it was new to me. It appears to have been released earlier this year. One interesting thing to note is that the report agrees the 20k number can't support retail alone. Ironically, this is because that population isn't dense enough to support retail in all the various downtown areas. Additionally, hybrid and WFH work will result in a 100,000 sq ft reduction in demand for retail downtown. That's a significant number and to put it into context, the report notes "downtown’s four shopping centers, Galleria, Tower City, The Arcades, and the 5th Street Arcades, which collectively reflect 594,000 SF." - so basically just lose an entire mall and maybe we've right-sized? Although the malls are vacant already, so the impact will likely be distributed more broadly throughout the downtown area. Also of note - 70% of the money spent downtown is from people visiting, not downtown residents. One page 15 the report highlights that this incentivizes businesses to locate closer to those visitors in places like Pinecrest or Van Aden rather than serving downtown directly. Which makes it difficult for us to pursue some of these national names we discussed up the thread. I'm still looking through this, but it really seems to confirm the population problem and how it's been compounded by WFH and sprawl. Buuuuut I'm going to keep reading until I get to a hopeful part!
October 10, 2024Oct 10 Didn't find it. Apologies for the two long posts back to back. Here are how many times these words appear: - Heinen's (0) - Bedrock (1) - National Prospects (1) - National Retailer (0) - Chain Store (0) - IKEA (0) Everyone should read for themselves, but here's my summary. The big push is to support infrastructure development (yay), incentivize small and minority owned business, increase popups and night markets, and add wayfinding. Kind of feels like a low hanging fruit report - I would be a bit bummed with my consultants if I paid for this personally. Why aren't we incentivizing national retailers? How are we partnering with developers? Are we incentivizing downtown residents to spend money nearby? What is the retail outlook for the Bedrock project or other areas? Is it possible for us to build more retail space downtown without cannibalizing existing retailers? What's also crazy to me is that they're putting a major emphasis on small business, but small business seems particularly difficult to connect with and incentivize: Quote "While the Diagnostic did not include a detailed assessment of the City of Cleveland’s existing small business grant and loan programs, too frequently, public sector funded loan and grant programs go underutilized owing to procedural details, including application procedures, review and underwriting policies, and reporting requirements, which often end up making these programs difficult to access. Frequently, small businesses may not be aware of available programs, or may find the paperwork and compliance requirements overly burdensome for the small amounts they seek." What we shouldn't expect in the near future is ground floor retail considered in conversion or new builds (Bridgeworks makes a lot more sense now) or a push to bring in big national retailers. They don't name a new population goal but I think the retail environment is bleaker overall than I realized.
October 11, 2024Oct 11 5 hours ago, JB said: A few comments above this actually got me thinking. Why does the city focus so much on Euclid? Shouldn’t they be focusing on most of the main streets and line them with businesses? I usually park off of Superior for games and even that street is pretty dead. Exactly, I never understood it. Euclid has been stable for years now while the rest of Downtown underperforms.
October 11, 2024Oct 11 The goal of 20,000 Downtown residents was based on the population needed to support a full service grocery store and related neighborhood level business. It was never intended or promoted that 20,000 people were going to be enough support major regional destination retail in Downtown alone.
October 11, 2024Oct 11 On 10/9/2024 at 3:08 PM, E Rocc said: I would imagine that downtown residents prefer to get food delivered than carry it from the stores or even remote parking spaces. Not me or my family. We’ve lived downtown almost 20 years and have never had groceries delivered. We’ve never used Door Dash or Uber Eats.
October 11, 2024Oct 11 47 minutes ago, stpats44113 said: Not me or my family. We’ve lived downtown almost 20 years and have never had groceries delivered. We’ve never used Door Dash or Uber Eats. You're old school downtown and predate common delivery. I'm suspecting you're the exception to the rule.
October 11, 2024Oct 11 14 hours ago, cadmen said: To be fair, l think the 20,000 number needed to support retail was a valid number pre WFH. After all those brick and morter stores were also counting on downtown offices being filled with potential customers too. Covid changed all that and probably the 20,000 metric too. When I worked in North Olmsted in the 1990s and 2000s, there was a Sgt. Pepperoni pizza shop within a short walk of my office. They also had a downtown location in the Arcade. The owners told me that their downtown location was much more profitable and nearly all of their business came from the weekday lunch hour. At least half of that downtown customer base is gone. So is Sgt. Pepperoni's. Office conversions to residential help soften the loss, but they don't replace office workers. Not when offices average 200-300 square feet per employee (and when workers are there every day) and downtown apartments average 1,000 square feet with 1.75 persons per downtown household in 2020. To compensate for the conversion of a downtown office building, each apartment would need to have three to five occupants or demolish the office building for an apartment tower 1.9 to 2.85 times taller than the office building. Neither one is happening. But here's what struck me. I think we would all be overjoyed if Downtown Cleveland was as vibrant as Downtown Vancouver, BC. Yet Downtown Vancouver has slightly less office space as Downtown Cleveland and theirs is priced two times more per square foot than ours. Their downtown bustles not just because they have 60,000 residents in a compact, amenity-laden urban core, but because they are a convention and tourism magnet that drives foot traffic even in a rainy climate. I think there's a lot we can learn from Vancouver. I recently wrote about it here: https://neo-trans.blog/2022/11/10/reactivating-downtown-cleveland/ "In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage." -- John Steinbeck
October 11, 2024Oct 11 14 hours ago, Henke said: Why aren't we incentivizing national retailers? How are we partnering with developers? Are we incentivizing downtown residents to spend money nearby? What is the retail outlook for the Bedrock project or other areas? Is it possible for us to build more retail space downtown without cannibalizing existing retailers? What's also crazy to me is that they're putting a major emphasis on small business, but small business seems particularly difficult to connect with and incentivize This makes sense to me. The vast majority of businesses are small businesses. And the (slight) majority of employment is by small businesses. If it’s hard to get them grants and loans, should we really blame the business owners themselves? That sounds like a permitting/process problem. When you travel to your favorite, vibrant city, are you looking around and thinking how lovely it is to see all these chain stores? Or is the array of unique and locally owned shops that charm you?
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