In the wake of the Downtown Heinen’s closure, many have wondered whether the city of Cleveland could have done more to prevent it from shuttering.

Ward 5 Councilman Richard Starr thinks the answer is yes.

On Thursday, roughly two weeks after Heinen’s fled his ward, Starr announced plans to introduce legislation that would have the city create a $10 to $15 million fund to help keep existing grocery stores open and offer incentives to help entice operators to open in areas that have struggled to attract options.

To put it simply: grocery stores are public goods, Starr believes, not just isolated private businesses.

“Everyone deserves to have good quality foods and also have different ways to be able to address their needs,” he told Scene in a phone call on Thursday.

“If we continue to sit aside, and not do anything, then we’re going to continue to get the short end of the stick,” he said. “And things are going to continue to get worse for our people rather than better.”

Cleveland has thrown money or tax cuts at big retail before, but not in the form Starr in proposing. Midtown’s Fairfax Market, which opened in 2024, received public assistance. And the East Side Market was leased for a $1 per year to its operator, Northeast Ohio Neighborhood Health Services, before operational issues drove Cleveland to cut ties with NEON.

But as far as what keeps stores open and affordable is a matter of debate these days, as city halls throughout the U.S. tinker with formats and initiatives to address food deserts and affordability. Baltimore, Detroit, Atlanta and New York City have all rolled out funding pools to either grant grocers loans or help build stores in high-demand areas. Atlanta’s $8.1 million fund helped raise its own downtown grocer, the Azalea Fresh Market, which a recent news report said had “exceeded expectations.”

It’s possible a similar fund in Cleveland could do the same.

Starr hasn’t narrowed down where exactly that $15 million or so might come from, save for a “combination of different funding sources,” he said. Or how grocers would repay grants or incentives if they did decide to close. Both are likely to be points of contention amongst councilmembers.

This is “not to guarantee the profitability of any private grocery operator or permanently subsidize an unsustainable business model,” the draft legislation reads. But to “create conditions under which responsible grocery operators have a reasonable opportunity to succeed.”

To borrow the baseball truism: If we make it easy, they’ll come and build it.

“We’re not waiting on somebody else to actually decide if they want to come into our neighborhood,” Starr said. “We’re deciding for ourselves that we’re going to make sure grocery stores are there.”

Lucas Reeve, a senior advisor to Mayor Bibb, has assigned a small task force to figure out, with the help of consultants Streetsense, what sort of grocery store might work downtown. Results from a study will be shared in late October. A public feedback session is scheduled for August 18 at Cleveland Public Library’s downtown branch.

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The post Councilman Starr Proposes City Grocery Fund to Attract and Back Stores appeared first on Cleveland Scene.

Ethan Khorana has encountered a lot of questions in his six years of community organizing. Why potholes go so long unfixed. Why overfilled dumpsters go so long without cleanup. Or public park grills go filthy. Many times, the answers aren’t all that complicated. Many times, you can just do things.

Khorana, a 20-year-old college student from Shaker Heights, encountered another one this summer when he was schooled in the realm of unpaid medical bills. With the right planning, he found, millions of dollars of his neighbors’ medical debt could be relieved for the price of a used sedan. All by making a few calls.

So, Khorana did just that. In partnership with Undue Medical Debt, a nonprofit based in New York City, he raised a little over $10,000 from a short list of donors and, starting Thursday, helped buy up and cancel out $1.3 million in medical debt for 1,148 Cuyahoga County residents.

It took Khorana two months of work. Half of his summer break as a sophomore public policy major at Duke University.

“What surprised me most was the fact that I had to be the person doing it,” Khorana told Scene, sitting at a table in Shaker’s Van Aken District. “You know, $10,000 for most government budgets is like a rounding error, to some extent.”

“But that’s fundamentally changing people’s lives and the way they’re able to move forward from a bill,” he said.

About 10 percent of Cuyahoga County’s 1.2 million residents had some sort of medical debt in 2022, a dashboard published by the Urban Institute showed, with a median amount of $440. But that’s just debt run by collections agencies, not on one’s credit card or managed by the hospital or clinic.

Hospital systems often sell debt in bulk, typically at a discount, on secondary markets. Companies like Undue, the liaison for Khorana’s campaign in Shaker, buy these debt packages with tremendous purchasing power. On average, every $1 raised equals $100 in medical debt cancelled, Undue said.

Which means Khorana scored a bit of a deal.

“This shows what’s possible when a community decides to come together and do something,” Marisa Clemente, Undue’s vice president of philanthropy, wrote Scene in an email. “We’re honored to have been part of it.”

Last spring, Cleveland City Council allocated $2 million of American Rescue Plan Act dollars to help erase $165 million of combined medical debt for 161,000 Clevelanders. Ward 4 Councilman Kris Harsh spearheaded the campaign after he, like Khorana, discovered erasing medical bills with Undue as buyer was easier done than thought.

But Khorana is no salaried politician. And his main project, a Better Future for Cuyahoga, is no council body.

That’s sort of Khorana’s point. After attending his first rally, a Black Lives Matter protest at 14, he aligned himself with a bevy of traditionally leftist issues—getting Shaker Heights police paired up with mental health co-responders (for which Khorana helped raised $20,000), or pushing Shaker Heights Mayor David Weiss to cancel the city’s controversial contract with Flock Safety. He helped Mayor Bibb transition to office in 2023.

If Khorana has a modus operandi, it is to show how everyday neighbors can latch onto good public policy without trudging through the long, laborious process of bureaucracy. 

“We all want potholes filled, want to be able to get to work, to put food on the table for one’s family,” Khorana said. 

“And I think that’s what I’ve been trying to preach as I went around the county,” he said, “is that we really all rise and fall together.”

After Khorana finishes his degree at Duke, he said he plans to return to Cleveland in 2028 to hit the ground running with his data-driven policy ideas.

And maybe cancel other types of debt. Credit card? Student loans? Mortgages?

“I’d love to,” Khorana said, laughing. “It’s actually a good idea. Maybe I’ll look into it.”

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The post He Helped Erase $1.2 Million in Medical Debt for Cuyahoga County Residents. It Took Him Just Two Months appeared first on Cleveland Scene.

Pure Green, a superfood juice bar founded in New York City, will be opening up a location on Public Square in the next few months.

The opening, in the former Joe Maxx Coffee space in Hotel Cleveland, is a big win for the square, which has struggled to attract and maintain retail in the past decade, even after its nationally-renowned makeover in 2016.

A chic-designed seller of juices and shots, Pure Green’s Public Square spot is the company’s third in Ohio. Two locations are operating currently in and around Columbus. The company calls itself “one of the fastest growing cold-pressed juice and smoothie companies in the United States.”

Austin Love, a broker for Cushman & Wakefield | CRESCO who helped facilitate the deal, said Pure Green felt immediately like the right fit for Downtown’s present atmosphere and its near future, minding the array of apartments and growing entertainment districts.

“We had high standards for what we wanted to be there,” he told Scene. “We think it fit Public Square, fit the branding for Hotel Cleveland and it fit Downtown overall.”

Hotel Cleveland underwent a $80 million renovation in 2024, with a total refresh of its banquet rooms and dazzling cocktail bar, Maker. But the renovation has since struggled to fill its retail spaces, which have sat dusty and vacant. Only Boost Mobile occupies one of four street-level spots.

According to its site, Pure Green sells 13 juices and six shots, from those with beets, watermelon, to grape, coconut and charcoal. Smoothies, toasts, açai bowls and steel-cut oatmeal are on the menu, too.

Pure Green has not announced an opening date.

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The post Pure Green to Open Off Public Square appeared first on Cleveland Scene.

Unionized Cleveland Public Library employees are poised to strike August 24.

That is, if a re-negotiated bargaining contract isn’t agreed upon between the workers’ union, Service Employees International Union District 119, and the library by noon that day.

Roughly 400 employees are involved in the current contract negotiations, though it’s hard to say exactly how many will strike if negotiations go south, CPL spokesperson Andrianna Sheriff wrote Scene in an email.

Seven bargaining meetings have happened, including one Friday afternoon, since Scene broke the news of the strike authorization vote on July 14. Pay increases, staff shortages, outsourcing and workplace safety are all issues on the table.

“Because negotiations are ongoing, the library cannot discuss specific proposals or areas of disagreement,” Sheriff told Scene. 

“Our focus is on reaching an agreement that supports our employees,” she said, “while ensuring the library can continue providing sustainable, high-quality programs and services to the community.”

If those 400 do strike, CPL’s Main Building and its two dozen other branches will attempt to stay open in some capacity, as they did during the pandemic, an employee not authorized to comment to media told Scene in July. Meanwhile, CPL said in a statement it has plans in place to keep libraries open.

“I don’t know if we could keep all of our 27 branches open though,” an employee said.

Another said the August 24 date is a worst-case scenario.

“We’ve been working under an expired contract for seven months and the people are getting angry,” they said. “We’re hoping our administration and the union can come to a fair agreement before we go on strike.”

An SEIU representative was not available for comment.

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The post Cleveland Public Library Employees Set Strike Date of August 24 as Negotiations Continue appeared first on Cleveland Scene.

In a bid to bring more grocery options downtown, the city will play host to the North Union Farmers Market throughout the rest of the summer.

From September 1 to October 6, the popular market will set up shop on Mall B, every Tuesday from 10:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., the city said in a press release.

Earlier this summer, Downtown Cleveland, Inc., began hosting its own Public Square Farmers Market every Thursday at 5 p.m.

North Union’s arrival comes just as Heinen’s closed its doors at East 9th and Euclid, leaving downtown without a full-service grocery store for the first time in more than a decade.

“This market is about bringing fresh food directly into the heart of the city,” Harriette Watford Lowenthal, Board President of the NUFM, wrote in a statement, “and creating another convenient way for Cleveland residents, downtown employees, and visitors to connect with local farmers and food producers.”

Local farmers, food producers and small businesses will make up the vendor base, though Lowenthal didn’t specify how many. Bands and chefs will be hanging out, as well.

Matt Cole, Cleveland’s HR director, said the intention is to test how North Union works in the downtown atmosphere. If it goes well, the city could expand it, he said, “into a longer-running market in 2027.”

The post North Union Farmers Market Coming to Downtown’s Mall B appeared first on Cleveland Scene.

Great Lakes Brewing has joined 13 other beverage manufacturers and sellers in suing the state under the belief that its weed laws unconstitutionally bar them from sourcing and selling THC drinks.

When Senate Bill 56 went into effect on March 20, it created a new ecosystem for any business interested in selling anything tied to marijuana or hemp. Although lawmakers intended to put the kibosh on shady smoke shops selling Delta-8 and Delta-9, those offering THC drinks argued that the state’s hyper-vigilance has uprooted what is already heavily self-regulated.

In other words, as the federal suit filed in late July argues, beverage sellers like Great Lakes could be reprimanded—that is, receive a felony-level hemp trafficking charge—if they’re caught and prosecuted for importing out-of-state hemp or marijuana products to brew their intoxicating seltzers.

“In effect, the State of Ohio, through the enactment of Senate Bill 56, has banned from market-participation all companies that produce federally legal hemp products,” the July 30 complaint reads, “yet do not have a complete physical presence (from cultivation through sale) in Ohio.”

Along with Great Lakes, the plaintiffs suing the state include Fifty West Brewing, Athens Beverage, Seventh Son Brewing, Rhinegeist, Wellness of Willoughby, Delta Beverages, Crescent Canna, Cheech and Chong’s Beverages, Torch Drinks, Uncle Arnie’s, Mile High Cure, Hometown Hero and Lifted Liquids.

All of these beverage makers and sellers stopped selling their THC drinks five months ago under the fear they could be criminally prosecuted. Senate Bill 56 formalized a wave of trepidation, amplified by Gov. Mike DeWine, around the fear that children had potentially unfettered access to intoxicating hemp products designed to look like candy—as, last October’s press conference showed, Nerds, Gushers or Sour Patch Kids.

Great Lakes immediately pulled its Float Shoppe THC seltzer off the shelfs and taps. Great Lakes CEO Christopher Brown went as far as joining Save Ohio Bevs, a grassroots campaign to convince the state it was doing more harm to small businesses than preventing bad. 

And, in Great Lakes’ case, throwing them a much-needed financial gain during a trying time for the alcohol industry in general.

“Everything THC was like whipped cream on a sundae,” Brown told Scene in April. “It was all to profit.”

The lawsuit, Brown told Crain’s Cleveland, is a last-ditch effort stemming from that campaign.

“We have six-figure-digits of inventory sitting in another state we are sitting on because of this line-item veto,” Brown told Crain’s, referring to S.B. 56. “All we ever wanted was the opportunity to go through regulation and make this the same as anything else in the alcohol category.”

Under current Ohio law, only licensed dispensaries, distributers and growers can manufacture or sell intoxicating hemp or weed products—joints, gummies, tinctures, seltzers, and so on. All beverage makers listed in the July complaint deal with some sort of out-of-state entity, which they argue is necessary for keeping costs reasonable and turning a profit.

What the beverage sellers want is mostly to ensure the state won’t prosecute them at the felony level for doing what they did before March 20.

In court filings, the state argued against the timing of the suit, stating the beverage makers waiting four months to file didn’t constitute an “emergency.” The state also argued it would be more fitting to hear the results of a suit filed last October, Titan Logistics Group LLC v. Tischler, before a decision is made on this one.

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The post Great Lakes Brewing Joins Suit Against Ohio in Fight Over THC Drinks appeared first on Cleveland Scene.

Pots and Plants has become a neighborhood staple in Ohio City, a place to get foliage to brighten your day and complete the decor in a room. It recently welcomed new owners, but not because former owner Lori Switaj wanted out. Turns out, she needed to get out.

Being around plants reminded Lori of her mother, who passed on her affection for greenery. When she started Pots and Plants, Lori was looking to invest her time and money into work she could enjoy on a deeper level than just another job.

“My entire business plan is one sentence: Don’t lose more than $500 a month,” she said. She achieved that easily and more. “I wanted a fun store,” she said. And it was fun for her, until she felt like she couldn’t breathe. Now, she can’t look at plants the same way.

“I probably should have gone to the doctors years before,” said Lori.  She had become too comfortable with getting recurrent pneumonia and having it treated with antibiotics. “I’ve had pneumonia so many times I can tell you like what lobe it’s in. I used to just go to the urgent care and say I’ve got pneumonia and they’d take an x-ray and they’d give me some [antibiotics].”

People can have underlying lung conditions which make them more prone to pneumonia. Or someone without a lung condition can be unlucky and get a bout of pneumonia, but the disease should not strike again and again. Lori only had very mild asthma, which never limited her from running or playing ice hockey for years. Something else was going on with her recurring infections. Her lungs were changing since she started the store. This past winter, Lori’s cough seemed the worst yet, making her short of breath, and lasted way too long. 

After consulting with her doctor, enough red flags were raised to pursue a consultation with a lung specialist. At the pulmonologist, with blood tests showing a spike in a specific antibody called IgE, her lung doctor and Lori looked at each other and almost in unison thought, “ABPA.” Maybe Lori wasn’t thinking ‘ABPA’ specifically, but they were both suspicious that the plants might be involved.

ABPA stands for allergic bronchopulmonary aspergillosis — a condition where the body overreacts to doses of aspergillosis (a type of mold) spores found in the air. Those spores are ubiquitous in our environment, found in soil and dust and are unavoidable. Certainly the ‘dose’ that Lori inhaled on a daily basis in her store was higher than the average person. But, this doesn’t mean we are under constant threat from soil. Lori developed an allergy to it, and it wreaked havoc on her lungs. With all allergies, you can develop one at any time even if you’ve been exposed to the allergen many times before.

When she received the diagnosis, Lori said, “it was kind of devastating. You’re just like, what am I supposed to do now?”

Lori’s story has other unique corollaries in medicine, where a person in certain trades or hobbies is constantly exposed to a trigger and are unlucky enough to develop a reaction. It’s called hypersensitivity pneumonitis, with nicknames like coffee maker lung, pigeon breeders lung, farmer’s lung, or malt worker’s lung. There are nuances to these treatments, but without a doubt, eliminating the exposure in all cases is the first measure that has to be taken. 

Lori confirmed this ABPA diagnosis by getting a bronchoscopy, where a camera is advanced into the trachea and deeper into the branches of the lung tree. A small amount of water is squirted and then sucked up so the contents can be studied. It confirmed she had aspergillosis mold in her lungs, coating the lining in her bronchi (branches of air tubes). Lori had to stay at a local hospital after that procedure. In a twisted moment of fate, she realized she was on the same floor she gave birth to her son and jokingly sent him a text that read: “I think I’m going to die on the floor that you were born on.” 

When she got discharged from the hospital, she needed a plan for the store. To start, she wasn’t even allowed to go inside of it. Lori recalled her first course of action.

 “I just put up a post saying 40% off all the plants. And it was like a riot… I passed by later. People were just like, we’re grabbing plants. It kind of felt like, oh, she’s dead. Let’s go take her stuff.”

There was a line around the corner of the block that day, and her employees came to the rescue by staffing the store. Despite the flash sale, and confusion of what to do after, Lori came to terms with her realization. “It has to be a plant store,” she said. It just wouldn’t be hers from now on. 

As her breathing is restored, Lori misses her plant store. In the boredom of her recovery, she asked herself, “How many times a day can I take the dog on a walk?” While on high doses of steroids, and not sleeping well, she made an impulse decision to buy 60,000 pieces of jewelry, thinking some niche retail like she had done before could be a good fit. 

Expected to make a very good recovery, her only limitation moving forward is not being trapped in a room with a plant. She’s embarking on some serious soul searching for her next long-term endeavor, jewelry or not. 

“I’ve been around the block enough to know that at some point I’m going to have some kind of idea or going to see something and I’m just going to do it,” she said, biding her time. Part of what she is grappling with is seeing the world of greenery in a completely new light. Never would she have thought that looking at a plant could spark fear. In the meantime, she cleared out the many plants she had at her house. Actually, she still keeps a couple small ones.

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The post She Owned a Plant Store. It Was Slowly Killing Her appeared first on Cleveland Scene.

Millennia Companies has less than a month to come up with tens of millions of dollars in debt payments or the fate of the Centennial Building will be in someone else’s hands.

That’s what a federal judge decided last week, when they okayed an extension of time to allow Millennia and founder Frank Sinito to pay back roughly $41 million in interest, legal fees, sales costs and receivership advances tied to the gargantuan, vacant building at 925 Euclid Avenue.

Sinito and Millennia now have until August 30 to come up with the money. 

If not, the Centennial will head to an auction that will wrap up in November. About a dozen potential buyers have had early talks with the building’s receiver, John Lane, though none are wholly serious or have made actual offers.

“Really, I hope Frank is successful,” Terry Coyne, the head of Newmark who brokered the sale to Sinito in 2018, told Scene in a phone call on Tuesday.

“He’s dedicated to Cleveland; he’d be the right person to do it,” Coyne said, referring to Sinito’s decade-long attempt to rehab the property. As for the auction otherwise: “If [the bank’s] lucky, they’ll get one dollar.”

Since updated renderings of the massive project debuted in 2023, the Centennial marked itself in Cleveland developer circles as the white whale of office conversions. Millennia wanted to put 413 workforce apartments and a full-service hotel in a century-year-old bank building, turn its vault into a speakeasy, and its lobby into a Marble Room-styled restaurant and a museum for vintage cars.

But beauty bore its costs. Though Millennia soon secured $75 million in state tax credits, the company would’ve had to cover about a half a billion dollars in sum to pull off what would be its largest development project in Cleveland.

One that hasn’t gotten easier with time. In 2024, the feds cut Millennia off from receiving money from the Dept. of Housing & Urban Development after reports of “deplorable conditions” in some of the properties it managed.

Water leakages have caused ceiling damage, a report in January found. The building has no dependable heat source or a suitable fire suppression system. All of its elevators are out of service (save for one freight elevator). About $400,000 had been spent this summer alone on maintenance, insurance and cleanup, a recent receiver’s report found.

Including added security. A string of urban explorers and vandals had broken into the Centennial, police records show, in the winter and spring, leading to smashed windows, broken doors and fire extinguisher exhaust damage. New lights and cameras were installed and another security guard was hired.

All costs soon to weigh on whomever takes ownership.

And all sides seem to be banking on Sinito’s ninth-inning comearound to put the Centennial project back on track. If Sinito doesn’t secure the property, there’s no guarantee a new buyer could plan apartments, lease it to offices or retail or open up the ground floor at all.

Millennia did not respond to Scene’s request for comment via email.

In a statement to Scene, Lane said he was committed to his role as court-appointed receiver but, like Coyne, said he hoped the Centennial ownership landed in the hands of someone who could develop it to its full potential.

“If Millennia takes on that developer role either through its right of redemption or as a subsequent bidder,” Lane said, “I certainly would see that as a win for all stakeholders.”

A Friday court filing from Sinito’s lawyers said that Millennia has “made significant progress towards obtaining funding” to scoring back the Centennial from the bank and receiver Lane.

The developer was “only weeks away from obtaining a loan or funding committment sufficient to redeem the property,” that filing read. A redemption that would “constitute a ‘win-win’ for all parties involved.”

HH Cleveland Huntington, a subsidiary of Millennia that bought the building, told Scene that they’re making “substantial progress” in paying back the debts and has plans in place “to obtain financing.”

“We appreciate the court’s decision to grant an additional 30 days to complete the payoff and redemption process and thanks the receiver for working constructively with the company,” a spokesperson wrote Scene, and that they remain focused “on completing the transaction and advancing plans to revitalize this iconic landmark in support of downtown Cleveland and the broader region.”

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The post Millennia Has One Month to Save Centennial Building From Auction appeared first on Cleveland Scene.

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 10^th 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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The post How Cleveland Lost Its Downtown Grocery Store and How It’s Working to Attract the Next One appeared first on Cleveland Scene.

New York has its Woodstock. San Francisco, its Pop Festival. And Nevada its Burning Man.

And for decades, Cleveland had its own festival of counter-culture, the Hessler Street Fair, a weekend of good vibes and music nestled on the L-shaped, brick-laden street adjacent to Case Western Reserve University.

But not for the past seven years.

That’s about to change this fall, when the Hessler makes its welcome return to University Circle. On October 3, a handful of bands and some 40 artists will convene to usher in a new era of both the fest and what the fest means for the block.

“To put it briefly, we miss it,” Sydney Slacas, a board member of the Hessler Neighborhood Association, told Scene.

“You know, everyone’s in a good mood, people dance, look at art, run into people they haven’t seen in the past year,” she said. “It’s just that communal spirit of people coming together to enjoy themselves and have a good time.”

Started in 1969 by a tight-knit band of neighbors, the Street Fair was a community tool to protest Case Western’s expansion. It soon formalized as the Hessler Neighborhood Association, a body that refused to allow the street’s landlords to intentionally depreciate home values in a bid to profit in a deal to a land-hungry university.

The HNA scored a big win in 1975. Hessler Street became Cleveland’s first official historic district, a title that allowed the block to fend off any major changes. The HNA’s annual fair fueled a way of promoting local culture that in turn helped fund ongoing maintenance and expected upkeep.

A dearth of organizers and money led to a ten-year hiatus, in 1985. Until the Hessler’s 50th anniversary in 2019, its hosts routinely balanced the work of the Street Fair’s upfront costs—permits, insurance, parking —with its beloved qualities: its kaleidoscopic buses, its jam bands, its iconic lemonade. (A family secret recipe.)

Typically a multi-day festival held close to Memorial Day weekend, this year’s Hessler will span seven hours on October 3.

“It’s why we’re calling it a soft reboot,” Timothy Smith, a produce salesman and bass player who grew up on Hessler Street, told Scene.

“It’s just one day, but we’re gonna try and bring as much of what you remember from the Fair back into as we can,” he added, “without overstressing our limited labor and funds.”

Along with holding an organizer role, Smith had lately played cane-wielding historian and advisor to a re-energized HNA committee, mostly twentysomethings that have some sort of connection to the street.

Jolted by the Cleveland Planning Commission’s okay of a new apartment complex—the first in a century—the HNA funneled irritation into a new pathway for Hessler’s upkeep. (The land was former host of the Little Hessler Museum.) A community garden formed. New street trees were planted. Hessler Court’s famous wooden bricks were, after the HNA’s push, replaced in 2024.

In tandem with a new website, the team began accepting donations and grants, including one from NEOMA, to revive the Street Fair with an air of professionalism. This year’s the first ever performing bands “will be paid by and large.”

Slated for performance so far are Hello 3D, the Jim Miller Band, Charlie Mosbrook & Friends, Country Honk, Hoodoo BBQ and Austin Walkin’ Cane. About 40 artists and vendors will be set up throughout the day.

If October 3 goes well, the HNA told Scene the Hessler could expand back into a multi-day fest and grow its artist count.

But before any predictions are slotted, the team simply wants to put on a really tremendous party once again. While reminding themselves it isn’t 1969. Or 1995. Or 2019, for that matter.

“I think that Hessler as an organism does, like everything else around it, does kind of have to either evolve or die,” Kristina Collins, a board member who’s lived on the street since 2012, said. “Hey, I’m just excited for it to get together.”

“It’s going to be a family reunion,” Smith added.

Definitely for those who recall the first.

“There’s nothing wrong with tradition,” he said. “Tradition creates community. Tradition creates memory. And tradition creates connection.”

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The post Hessler Street Fair Returning in October After Seven-Year Break appeared first on Cleveland Scene.