When Heinen‘s announced in June that it would close its Downtown Cleveland location in the historic Trust Building, the news hit the city like a shock.
Mayor Justin Bibb said he was “deeply disappointed” by the choice. Ward 5 Councilman Richard Starr grieved a “loss” of Downtown’s “vital anchor.” County Executive Chris Ronayne called it a “bummer.”
But, in reality, those officials knew years before the news broke that Heinen’s stunning spot at the corner of East 9th and Euclid was in serious financial straits.
In early 2024, two and a half years before his decision, Jeff Heinen approached Bibb about the health of what has been crowned one of the most beautiful grocery stores in America.
Despite the accolades, endless posts on social media, and a small but devoted customer base as Downtown continued to grow as a neighborhood, the past decade wasn’t exactly smiling on the company.
Delivery apps, including DoorDash and Instacart, hit phones in 2018, changing how Clevelanders bought groceries overnight. The Covid pandemic further upended in-person shopping. The May 2020 George Floyd protests and riots left lasting and expensive damage. (And closed the store for five months.)
The company was losing about $1.5 million a year on the location, Heinen disclosed to City Hall, and had to decide by June 2024 whether or not to renew a ten-year lease.
Jeff Epstein, Bibb’s chief of integrated development at the time, was assigned as the city’s liaison with Heinen. He asked Heinen for a complete financial breakdown. “It will be helpful to understand the situation and lay of the land and see what we may be able to do to help,” Epstein wrote to Heinen on February 6, 2024. “We want to do everything we can to keep Heinen’s operating downtown.”
Heinen’s paid Geis Companies $470,000 a year in rent, spent $320,000 on private security and $434,000 on property taxes, and carried a $3.2 million payroll for 77 employees.
The best option, Epstein and Heinen seemed to agree, was to convince Geis to lower the rent for a new, two-year lease deal and bide time to figure out how to build up sales.
If they did? “I am confident,” Epstein wrote on June 11, 2024, “the financial performance of the store will improve dramatically.”
Tom McNair, then the city’s economic director who worked with Epstein, recalled the push. “I think they looked at their losses and said, ‘We obviously can’t continue to do this,’” he told Scene. “And we said, ‘No, we need to try and see if there’s some way, shape or form we can, you know, figure out a different way and different path.”
On August 2, Heinen wrote Epstein; Debbie Berry, a county development chief; and DCI head Michael Deemer with good news: Geis okayed a two-year lease that lowered Heinen’s annual rent by about a quarter, as long as Heinen’s vacated the rotunda’s second floor. About half a million dollars in public support would help fund that transition, as long as the money was spent before July 31, 2026.
Heinen seemed relieved at the deal. “We will do our best to make sure your investment of time, energy and money will help us be at Euclid and 9th for a long time,” he wrote to Epstein and crew.
City and county officials bandied about ideas that Heinen’s hoped would generate $600,000 in additional sales. Heinen’s could try curbside pickup or DoorDash. It could cater office lunches or advertise directly to surrounding apartment dwellers. It could host wine nights, validate parking, run campaigns lauding home-cooked meals instead of pricey restaurant dinners. And, at the behest of Downtown Cleveland, Inc., Heinen’s could leverage DCI’s Neighborhood Safety Specialists for a new loss mitigation plan that could slash security costs by half.
By December 2024, plans were in motion for a 10th anniversary celebration for the following year. New signage went up, including ads for comped parking (if shoppers spent $50). Curbside pickup was arranged.
But a year and a half later, the numbers still didn’t add up. The company concluded the Downtown Heinen’s would never, in its current form, be profitable at 9th and Euclid.
“I could go on and on but the salient fact is that our operating model does not fit that location,” Jeff Heinen wrote in a letter in late June, “and no entity, governmental or otherwise, is willing to write checks to cover our losses.”
Jackie Shultz, Heinen’s marketing director, framed the decision like one might the untimely death of a family member. “We’ve been in business 97 years,” she told Scene, “and haven’t closed a store since 1986.”
So what now?
The headwinds aren’t great, and replacing Heinen’s won’t be easy, but the city said it’s working to find a solution.
Lucas Reeve, one of Bibb’s senior advisors, was recently selected to lead the city’s grocery task force to figure out what should and could come after Heinen’s, either in the same space or somewhere else downtown.
Reeve’s work is starting with a data haul—a months-long, $70,000 study of Downtown’s food sector led by Washington, D.C.-based consultant Streetsense.
The goal is to determine what kind of store will work in today’s market—not in 2015’s—and meet the needs of downtown residents who depend on it. In other words, to figure out precisely why Heinen’s model failed downtown.
“There’s a lot of stones to unearth,” Reeve told Scene. “The goal here is to move quickly and be able to have an implementation pathway to start having real serious conversations as soon as the study is complete.”
But Downtown residents, as they told Scene time and again, know very well that Downtown needs a grocery store.
A survey of 532 residents conducted in partnership with the Downtown Neighborhood Association showed this clearly. Ninety-five percent of respondents said Heinen’s closure will have a “major or moderate personal impact” on them, three-quarters of whom shopped there “at least once a week.”Forty-one percent have “no regular car access.” Eighty-eight percent simply demand a new “full-service grocery store Downtown.”
“Feels less like a neighborhood without [one],” one respondent wrote.
Nearly half said they might relocate elsewhere.
“I will not re-sign my downtown lease, and instead will look to move out of the area if there is not a timely replacement,” another answered.
Some of those same people gathered on the evening of July 15 in the Heinen’s rotunda at an event hosted by the Downtowners Club. (Disclosure: The author is an organizer of the group.) About 60 came together to commiserate over glasses of wine and ponder what, if anything, will occupy 900 Euclid Avenue in the near future.
But the vibe wasn’t exactly a funeral. Guests reminisced about second-floor dates over Godfather wraps while others speculated about whether Whole Foods or Kroger could come. (A Walmart would be an abomination, someone quipped.) Some helped run the old coffee shop; others helped sell bottles of wine. “I spent the last 17 years of my life tied to this store in some way,” one woman said. She looked up at the rotunda. “I’m going to miss it here.”
Lucas Reeve was there too. A soft-spoken man in his forties, he’d come that night to both presumably comfort mourning downtowners and offer reassurance that Cleveland could attract another quality grocer. “If anything, it’s a total bummer,” he said, echoing Ronayne.
That same day, Reeve and his grocery task force received a 12-page proposal from Streetsense, titled “Grocery Market Opportunity & Attraction Strategy,” that will serve as City Hall’s roadmap to replacing Heinen’s. By the end of October, the guide will brief Reeve and the city’s team on which downtown buildings could best house the right kind of grocery based on residents’ current food needs. It will also recommend, the proposal says, “prospective grocery operators that represent strong candidates for future outreach.”
“We are in the moment, and we just wanna make sure that we get it right this time around,” Joevrose Bourdeau Small, the city’s director of economic development, told Scene. “We want to understand exactly what kind of format would work, what kind of food access would work for the demographics that exist downtown.”
When Scene presented all of this to a pair of real estate brokers, Rico Pietro and Austin Love, the two said they were “100 percent certain” another grocery would be coming soon to Downtown Cleveland—and one that could better serve those who live in the city center.
“I don’t think they need a pinwheel turkey sandwich with cranberry gravy,” Pietro said. “They were simply stocking the shelves for a different clientele than what it could be today.”
“It’s a non-traditional space,” Love added. “You can’t take the model of what you would do in Strongsville or Chagrin Falls or in Avon and try to plug it into downtown.”
Both brokers and three other retail analysts interviewed for this story said they envisioned another grocer occupying the corner of East 9th and Euclid.
“If I were Meijer, if I were Whole Foods, if I were Sprouts, I would sure as fuck take that location,”Pietro said. “Think about the brand loyalty. You bet on Cleveland—there’s not a way you can become more visible.”
Heinen’s made that bet a decade ago. $18 million in losses later, the question is: Will anyone make another one?
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