Since Dave’s Markets announced plans to relocate from Payne Ave. in AsiaTown to a proposed business park in Cleveland’s Midtown community next year, the surrounding neighborhood is gearing up for the loss of its full-service grocery.
Dave’s owners plan to build a new store on East 59 th and Chester, about a mile from its present home. That store stands where the change originated back in the 1920s as a corner store. Now the company has 14 locations in Cleveland, its suburbs and in Akron.
The proposed store would be part of the Link59 complex between Euclid and Chester. Plans for the area include University Hospital's Rainbow's Center for Women and Children, and other, refurbished office buildings.
Although the new store would be in a heavily trafficked areas, the distance could be an obstacle to long-time customers who would have to take a bus to shop for food, says Michael Fleming of the St. Clair Superior Development Corporation.
“Although the new Dave’s store would be better serviced in general by public transportation, the current service is not very heavily available at night or on weekends. The No.2, which goes up nd down 55 th is more limited and that’s going to be something that we would need to discuss with RTA and Dave’s,“ he says.
Fleming points out there are four other grocery stores in the Asia-town neighborhood, but they sell predominantly ethnic foods. When Dave’s moves out of its Payne Avenue store, it plans to require a no-compete clause – meaning no new grocery store -- when it leases the old building to new renters.
But Michael Byun, who heads an Akron-based social service agency with an AsiaTown office, expects the other store owners might carry products that will attract attract new customers.
"I'm confident that the markets in the area that are primarily Asian serving will shift and adapt and see this as an important opportunity to reach a new client," says Byun, who directs Asian Services In Action.