Credit: Courtesy Hard Rock
The string of restaurants and bars that have joined the fray of the Cleveland dining scene in the past couple of years is staggering and every week seems to bring a new announcement of an addition. That’s been especially true in recent months as Cleveland looks forward to July and the arrival of the RNC.

July, however, will bring at least one closing.

A press release from Hard Rock announced today that the Hard Rock Cafe Cleveland, highly visible outside of Tower City thanks to the big ole guitar by the road, will be shuttering. A specific date has not yet been announced.

The “strategic decision,” according to the release, is due to Hard Rock shifting efforts to the Hard Rock Cafe at Northfield Park and the Rocksino.

The downtown location opened back in 1998, one of the seemingly endless Hard Rock cafes dotting the world, back when Tower City was in its glory days. Those days have gone and recent months have seen major changes coming to the complex — Dan Gilbert bought the Avenue at Tower City and K+D is in negotiations to buy the tower itself, with all its attending office space. Apartments are planned and who knows what Mr. Gilbert has in store for the mall, but it’s sure to be better than what’s there now.

This article appears in May 18-24, 2016.

Vince Grzegorek has been with Scene since 2007 and editor-in-chief since 2012. He previously worked at Discount Drug Mart and Texas Roadhouse.

11 replies on “Hard Rock Cafe Cleveland Closing in July”

  1. Why would they close this location. It gets really good business. I’ve been there 5 times and the service isn’t great, the servers I had all 5 times were a little attitude-Y but the food was great. I think they should keep it. Gilbert has owned The Avenue for a while now and there are no plans to do anything with that mall. Just revamp it with more modern and upscale stores like Banana Republic, J. Crew, Gap, AE, H&M, Black Market, Express and even local retailers as well. Please for the love of God, fix the food court and movie theatre and it’ll do fine.

  2. Yes, this is sad, sad news. I thought the city was trending up, but this decision does not reflect that.

  3. Will they keep the guitar out front? Really neat design and think it adds to the urban landscape downtown. Perhaps they can keep the guitar but remove the wording or change it to something more Cleveland centric?

  4. ‘Anon’ here. I misread the headline. I thought it was the club that was shutting down. The Cafe… meh. That said, I agree with ClevelandBoy90 that the mall should be given another shot by installing decent retailers. Twenty years ago, it had those stores, but one by one they all closed.

  6. It was hip to have a Hard Rock cafe in London. New York or Paris. Cleveland…not so much.

  7. I’m really not that sad to see them go…this restaurant was nice to have Downtown before we had way better places to eat. The only people who really went there were probably backward suburbanites and tourists who don’t realize that East 4th is more fun!

  9. I’ve never been there when it wasn’t crowded – how is it “strategic” to close it? Snd in terms of the mall itself – when I was there for the Film Festival, it looked great. Clean, safe, stores open. It is such a shame when companies have no loyalty or do not think “big picture” instead of “strategic.”

  10. It’s about money as always. If it’s making good money there’s no way they close it. Must have been struggling. It’s pretty simple.

  11. I’m not an old fogey by any means and have attended 100s of concerts in the last 45 years. My problem with Hard Rock was that the music was too loud for a productive conversation. We would try to support it by having work lunches there and it was simply too difficult. I won’t miss it, not with all the great choices we have now.

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