“It is always disheartening when something does not go according to plan, and especially when it is a business closing,” says company representative Andrew Revy. “Sadly, after 8-plus years we have closed the University Circle store. The most difficult emotional aspect for all of this, apart from the financial impact on us, is that we have employees lives that are directly affected. We have an excellent group of employees led by our store manager, Don Bellino, who have done a tremendous job of customer service and were dedicated to trying to make the store a success. Unfortunately, the volume of customers is just simply not there for business viability currently, or the foreseeable future.”
This article appears in Apr 22-28, 2020.
I hope the wonderful downtown location never closes. I spend so much time and money in there. I love it. I have been to the uptown location and it was alright ,but didn’t have that old store atmosphere of the downtown location. Just wish downtown could do something about the old flooring. I love the charm of it but looks real bad and unsanitary. Luck to all and stay safe.
Uptown has been a total failure that did nothing but put money in maron’s pocket. Tax money.
Not Viable. That’s the quote that applies to that entire boondoggle.
I’ll have to agree, “Uptown has been a total failure “
In trying to serve all, they ended up serving no one !
I’ve attended a UCI sponsored, Free Summer Social “Meet Your Neighbors” Dinner/Picnic on MOMA’s Plaza , as well as a free Jazz Musical event on a closed Euclid Avenue sometime in 2017 or 2018, and both events had the most dismal vibe I’ve ever experienced in Cleveland since a “RiverFest” in the early 2000’s that included a uniformed , heavily armed, flack jacketed, CPD Officer on every street corner in the “Old” Flats Eastbank.
It is one of the WORST socially accessible and architecturally bereft atmospheres the CLE has to offer.
Hell, even the food served Uptown by most purveyors is little more than county fair fare, at 3x the price.
From the very beginning of the redevelopment, Uptown has always felt like another Crocker Park or Legacy Village…I have always. since Day One, called it “Yuptown”…this is a “student neighborhood?” In whose bad dreams?
That part of the Euclid Avenue “urban experience” was what was handed on a platter to Case Western students like a kid who gets a miniature town on Christmas morning. It popped up all at once, instead of being allowed to take shape over years and decades, as happens in the “real” college towns. Instead, Case got an “instant college town”…right out of the box. Just add students, and ambiance. Didn’t happen. The result was a complete and utter flop.
The old Euclid Tavern felt like a student bar…and so did the Happy Dog. The rest? Meh. “Jimmy Johns” was not a college hangout. “Barnes and Noble” isn’t a “college-town bookstore.” Mi Pueblo was replaced by yet another overpriced apartment building.
“Uptown” will never be anything like a downtown Ann Arbor or a High Street in Columbus, no matter how much they try to tweak it, or what opens there. Hell, it’ll never even be another downtown Kent…and that’s a real put-down.”Yuptown” is nothing more than a “suburb in the city” for over-privileged college kids and wealthy foreign students…and something of a sick joke.
In normal times, I go to University Circle a lot. I would gladly forego all the food joints for one good deli serving comfort food. But those on the academic and medical campuses don’t want one…or a home-style place like a Sokolowski’s. That’s too Old Cleveland. Uptown is the New Cleveland they want. Or what the developers and money boys think they want. And they can have it.