When a friend sent Shane Wynn a picture of the “coming soon” sign for a downtown Akron grocery store kitty-corner to where she plans to open The Mercantile market next month, she first thought the picture must be AI.
“That can’t possibly be real,” Wynn recalled thinking Tuesday, when she learned of the planned market at 159 S. Main St. “Nobody wanted to do this for 15 years.”
Now, Wynn is contemplating whether it still makes sense to open at all. While she may not have a choice in the matter — she has a lease in Cascade Plaza’s PNC Building — the yet-unnamed market “makes our business plan unviable,” she said.
“The reality is, it’s us or them or they both fail,” she said. “It no longer makes any sense to open this store with a direct competitor across the street. We’re not idiots.
When a friend sent Shane Wynn a picture of the “coming soon” sign for a downtown Akron grocery store kitty-corner to where she plans to open The Mercantile market next month, she first thought the picture must be AI.
“That can’t possibly be real,” Wynn recalled thinking Tuesday, when she learned of the planned market at 159 S. Main St. “Nobody wanted to do this for 15 years.”
Now, Wynn is contemplating whether it still makes sense to open at all. While she may not have a choice in the matter — she has a lease in Cascade Plaza’s PNC Building — the yet-unnamed market “makes our business plan unviable,” she said.
“The reality is, it’s us or them or they both fail,” she said. “It no longer makes any sense to open this store with a direct competitor across the street. We’re not idiots.”
She’s not the only one who thinks Akron’s downtown population of about 3,000 residents can’t sustain more than one grocery option. Chris Hardesty, the executive director of the Downtown Akron Development Corp., said he doesn’t see how both can succeed.
“We don’t have enough people to support two grocery stores,” he said. “We can’t sustain two. We’ve been very clear about that.”
Adding insult to injury, Wynn said, is the fact that she and partner Becca Gippin looked at the 159 S. Main space last year before choosing the Cascade Plaza property. In an Oct. 16 text message she shared with Signal Akron, Wynn told Gerilyn Gleason that she found an opportunity that was more visible and more affordable than what 159 S. Main had offered.
“We really appreciate your time and efforts and hope we can still collaborate in meeting your tenants needs and being a good neighbor, right across the street,” Wynn texted.
“Thank you for letting us know,” Gleason replied.
Tuesday, Gleason, the CEO of Commercial Property Partners, said the “small bodega” the building owner planned to open in about 45 days was not meant to undermine The Mercantile.
“I don’t think that we’re competing at all,” Gleason said. “It’s different products, different hours.”
But the toilet paper, paper towels, ketchup, mustard and milk that Gleason said will be in stock are “all the things that we’ll have,” Wynn said.
“They are direct competition,” Wynn said. “It just makes me quite sick.”
No name, hours yet for market at 159 S. Main
Gleason said the market at 159 S. Main doesn’t have a name yet, or hours, but could be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., with an option for tenants of the 107 apartments in the building to access the store after hours. She said the staples-oriented store would sell household items for anyone who lives downtown.
There are no plans to sell alcohol, she said, which differentiates it from The Mercantile, which will also sell bottles of wine, coffee, grab-and-go food options and local gifts and is expected to be open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Saturday.
Gleason said discussions about a grocery store at 159 S. Main St. have been ongoing for years. Without an outside operator coming in, she said, the store will be owned and operated by the building ownership.
“When we take charge and we do something, we tend to be successful with these type of things,” she said.
The placement of the “coming soon” sign, which Gleason said came to head off further inquiries about the space, took many in downtown Akron by surprise.
Kimberly Beckett, the president and CEO of Downtown Akron Partnership, said she didn’t have any information about what the concept was. Steve Millard, the president and CEO of the Greater Akron Chamber, said in an email that he hadn’t heard anything about the potential for a second grocery store downtown and didn’t know if owners had been in touch with anyone about what they plan to open. And Hardesty said everything he knew about the store he learned Tuesday, after the sign went up.
“I’m not aware of anybody else in downtown who’s aware it’s happening,” he said. “It really kind of bothers me.”
Stephanie Marsh, a spokesperson for the city, said she had no additional information about the store.
Grocery store failure could send Akron backward
While Hardesty said the owners of the 159 S. Main building have the right to open anything they want to in their space, the fact that Wynn and Gippin had toured the building, and shared their plans, makes the decision feel “odd.”
He said while there’s long been a desire for access to snacks and basic necessities downtown, he’s frustrated local officials have worked hard to bring a business in and now will have a duplication of that effort.
“We can’t get out of our own way,” Hardesty said of the city. “I think Akron loses.”
If one of the stores was on the other end of downtown, he said, there would be a possibility that they could serve different markets. But since they’re within eyesight of each other, he’s convinced that one — and maybe both — will not survive.
If that happens, he said, “Akron takes two steps back.”
“It’s detrimental to our long-term success,” Hardesty said of downtown. “To say that it’s not competition I think is wrong. It’s going to directly compete.”
Another downtown concept, Crafty Steere, will have a deli case and baked goods attached to a restaurant, but it won’t sell the household items that both The Mercantile and the market at 159 S. Main plan to.
For Wynn, being forced to open The Mercantile if that market is also there would be “a trainwreck.”
“It endangers us and it’s foolish,” she said. “If the store across the street is a go, I don’t see how we could.”
She said she went to the building Tuesday to see if she could talk to someone, but there was no one present and no one had gotten back to her about the concept.
She and Gippin “are scrapping together by the skin of our teeth to solve this problem for downtown Akron,” Wynn said, and found the newly planned market disheartening. She described the sensation as being kicked in the face, after organizations like Hardesty’s Downtown Akron Development Corp. have made bets on their success, his in the form of a $50,000 grant.
“They know our story, they met us personally,” Wynn said. “They decided to swoop in and open one first. Why? Why? It’s so crazy. It’s right across the street.”
Editor’s note: Signal Akron is a tenant in the 159 S. Main building.
