Things aren’t quite the same in Athens’ business world
By Nick Claussen
September 8, 2008
A new restaurant on East State Street, new products for the grocery store on Stimson Avenue, and a few changes in uptown Athens businesses are all on tap for this fall.
In addition to the new businesses in the city, construction is continuing on several projects, and two new apartment buildings were finished over the summer. One of the apartment buildings, in fact, was built over the summer in a place where a rental house stood when students left town in the spring.
In uptown Athens, Verizon has already put up signs in the former restaurant space that it’s now using as a storefront. The property held World’s Best Bagels for several years, as well as other businesses.
The Seven Sauces restaurant on North Court Street closed earlier this year, but Larry Payne, director of member services for the Athens Area Chamber of Commerce, said that Stephen’s fine-dining restaurant is planning to move into the space. Stephen’s is currently located on East State Street in uptown Athens in the same building that holds Wild Mercantile and Precision Imprints. Magic Video used to be located in that building, but the business closed in the spring. Wild Mercantile has since moved into the former video space, and Precision Imprints has expanded into part of the former Wild Mercantile space. In addition, an indoor rock-climbing business, Solution Rock Gym, has opened in the building. A business that buys gold and jewelry from area residents also has opened.
Another restaurant is expected to move into the Stephen’s space, but all of the details have not been finalized, Payne said.
The Blue Gator bar/restaurant closed over the summer, but attorney John Stets, representing owners Terry Anderson and Joel Schechtman, told The Athens NEWS in August that the business would reopen for fall quarter.
The Blue Gator is for sale, as is the uptown bar/restaurant Skipper’s, which is also owned by Anderson and Schechtman. Stets said that when the Blue Gator reopens, it may offer some less-expensive menu items and book more local music acts than it has in the past.
The Athena movie theater in uptown Athens closed in June, and the management contract of the theater ended July 1. Ohio University owns the theater and previously contracted with University Cinemas, the company that also owns and operates the Athena Grande movie theater.
The OU College of Fine Arts will now manage and operate the theater when it reopens in the fall, with plans to continue it as a working theater that has an art-film focus. The Athena is scheduled to reopen Sept. 19.
Also in uptown Athens, the Chop Shop barbershop/beauty supply shop has opened next to the Athena, the Athens County Republican Party has moved its fall campaign headquarters into the former Burger King storefront (which has been vacant for several years), the Barack Obama Athens County campaign headquarters moved into the former GRID Lab space in the 5onCourt building, and the
College Bookstore remodeled its building and has a new entrance.
On East State Street, a new pizza/Italian restaurant is going into the former Damon’s location. Local businessman Joe Limoli bought the property, and he and James Bernosky applied for a liquor permit for the business, according to a copy of the permit application filed with the city.
Payne said that the restaurant will become the new Abrio’s, which was a pizza place that Limoli previously owned and operated on East State closer to uptown. This business will also have Italian food and a deli, and plans are for it to have an outdoor garden as well, Payne said.
Donato’s Pizza has already opened on East State Street in the business that formerly held the Lollipop, which served ice cream and sandwiches, and had video games. The Donato’s restaurant also has an ice cream business in it, and several video games.
In the University Mall on East State Street, Dunham’s Sports will open in the fall in part of the space that formerly held the K mart store. Mall owners Brent Hayes and Tom Parfitt have stated that other businesses are interested in moving into the other part of the space, but no details have been announced.
Verizon also opened a storefront in the University Mall over the summer.
THE GROCERY STORE on Stimson Avenue has new owners and a new name. Libby Markham is the new owner of the Market Uptown, which will soon be called the Busy Day Market.
Markham explained that she also owns Busy Day Catering, which is a catering and personal chef business.
“The biggest change is just to kind of… improve on the mixture of food,” Markham said about her plans for the store. The business currently is more like a convenience store, and she’s planning to bring in gourmet foods, specialty items and locally produced foods.
“We also want to put in a commercial kitchen,” Markham said. With the new kitchen, the store could produce gourmet meals-to-go, she added. The store will have the basic food items that have made it popular with students, and will still sell beer, wine and cigarettes, according to Markham.
She said she hopes the new items will bring in more community residents to the store.
“We want everybody,” Markham said. “We’re going to make it more user friendly.” She is also cleaning up the store and trying to make it look nicer for the customers, she said.
NEW APARTMENT COMPLEXES are open this year on Palmer Street and Mill Street. The Palmer Place complex (which is also on Stimson Avenue and Kurtz Street) is built on the former Landmark property. The one-building project has 64 apartments with a total of 255 bedrooms. All of the apartments were rented out in just 10 days in 2007. The former Bob’s Supermarket store that formerly stood on Stimson Avenue was razed over the summer to make room for more parking for the new apartments.
At 176 Mill St., a three-bedroom rental house was torn down over the summer and replaced with a two-story building with four townhouse apartments, each with four bedrooms and two bathrooms. The townhouse apartments were built in a factory and then pieced together on the property over the summer, which made for a very quick construction period on Mill Street.
The next major apartment project in Athens will be the Summit at Coates Run project, and the developers have been moving dirt for it all summer. The controversial apartment project is planned for the ridetop on Richland Avenue across the street from the University Courtyard apartment complex.
City residents have been concerned about the project for years over issues such as how much dirt will be removed from the hill to lower it and flatten it for the apartments, how many people will live in the complex, how all the new residents will impact traffic on Richland Avenue, and how developers got around the permitting process by making the project all one very large building.
The developer, Edwards Communities of Columbus, is planning to build an 870-bedroom, student-oriented apartment complex.
One other large construction project in Athens is the continuing development of the University Estates project on Armitage Road/Ohio Rt. 682. This massive project includes single-family homes, condominiums, gated communities, luxury apartments, a golf course (which is currently on hold), a hotel/conference center, businesses and a continuing-care retirement community. Three other CCRCs are also planned in Athens on West Union Street/Ohio Rt. 56, Stimson Avenue and Columbus Road, and but no actual construction work has started on the main parts of any of the four projects.
Comments
Please log in to post a comment.
