AUGUST 12, 2024
Downtown may be seeing a retail revival Openings are paving the way for a new vibe after post-pandemic struggles By Stan Bullard
Employees pass out gifts outside Amplify’s Cleveland Heights store on Aug. 6, the first day of recreational cannabis sales. | GUS CHAN
Warm welcome for legal weed Customers, operators excited despite nearly nine-month wait By Marcus Gilmer and Alexandra Golden It's been a long, strange trip to get here, but on Tuesday, Aug. 6, adult-use recreational cannabis went on sale at dozens of dispensaries across Ohio, nearly nine months after voters approved Issue 2 to make rec sales a reality. The mood at Amplify, in the Coventry district in Cleveland Heights, was jubilant in contrast to the low clouds and humid air as potential customers, not worried about potentially higherthan-usual prices, supporters and curious onlookers joined reps from the city and Buckeye See WEED on Page 16 Relief — which owns Amplify — to celebrate the historic event.
New shops are slowly cropping up in downtown Cleveland, noteworthy vehicles for smallbusiness growth and experimentation. For instance, there's Intro, a women’s boutique at the Harbor Verandas retail-and-apartment building between the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and the Goodtime III tourist boat dock at Lake Erie. And at long-suffering Tower City, there's Apple Jax Toys, which already has Lakewood and Chagrin Falls stores. They and others are creating a post-pandemic vibe after the struggles of two failed downtown malls and decades of business decline from suburbanization that was punctuated by online shopping, which roiled traditional retail. Last year, so many customers asked if Intro had a souvenir (such as a magnet) they could buy before leaving that Emily
Kovach, co-owner with sister Elaina Kovach, said, “We realized we can work on that.” The result was Token, a tiny shop next door to Intro that's stocked with souvenirs the two create themselves or made locally. The goods range from coasters shaped like 45 rpm records or items with sayings such as “Cleveland isn’t boring.” Token also is profitable. “We won’t move from here,” Emily Kovach said, though she conceded one detriment: The wind is freezing as it comes off the lake in the winter. In the meantime, a holiday pop-up shop from last Christmas at Tower City is among a growing group of startup and minorityowned stores in the mall. Apple Jax Toys was the third location, after sites in Lakewood and Chagrin Falls, for husbandand-wife owners Allen Singleton and Diana Hlywiak. See RETAIL on Page 12
Lakefront plan moves to next phase By Kim Palmer
There was a lot of talk on Monday, Aug. 5, about moving to the next phase of the city's lakefront development at the public release of the latest North Coast Master Plan. “I'm so excited to be here today to kick off the next phase of the work that our administration has been doing in the community and with the community to
re-imagine our lakefront for the next 100-plus years,” Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb told the gathering of residents and project stakeholders at the public update of the plan held Monday evening on Mall C downtown. Bibb’s intro touched on the fact that over the last century, there have been almost as many lakefront plans as there have been mayors. But he added that “over the last three years” of his admin-
istration, there has been significant work “to make sure we see real shovels in the ground.” Why this plan is different from the others, Bibb said, is that after hundreds of hours of community outreach and feedback, this plan is “rooted in the lived experiences of our residents.” “This vision is about equity, this vision is about access and See LAKEFRONT on Page 17
VOL. 45, NO. 30 l COPYRIGHT 2024 CRAIN COMMUNICATIONS INC. l ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
SPORTS BUSINESS Cleveland Browns give fans a first look at proposed dome, lay out the team’s case in a new letter. PAGE 2
Emily Kovach and her sister, Elaina Kovach, have staked out a spot near the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame for a boutique that fits the emerging theme in the city of Cleveland to build on tourism as a source for downtown retailing. | STAN BULLARD