Columbus, Ohio USA
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Dis 'n' Data
By Margaret Marten, Editor
email margaret@shortnorth.com
November/December 2019

DIS 'N' DATA ARCHIVE

Bonobos

In September, the men’s apparel store Bonobos opened in the Pizzuti Companies’ mixed-use development at 883 N. High St. where the Grandview Mercantile furniture store operated for 20 years. That building was torn down to make way for the new four-story Mercantile building.

Founded in 2007, Bonobos began as an online seller of men’s pants, gradually expanding its inventory. The brick-and-mortar stores were introduced in 2012. This is the first one in Columbus. Walmart purchased Bonobos for $310 million in 2017, which means the Short North can boast the presence of a Walmart subsidiary in its midst. The shop is open 7 days a week during standard business hours. The phone number is 614-297-8907. The website is www.bonobos.com.

SeeSaw

The restaurant SeeSaw opened near Donatos in late August in the former RAM Restaurant & Brewery space. You may recall that Donatos was razed at N. High Street and E. First Avenue to make way for the two-story building. RAM (a chain) opened there in 2016 and remained almost two years. The chef and owner of SeeSaw, Jonathon Sawyer, is a James Beard Award winner. The project partners include longtime Cleveland Indians second baseman Jason Kipnis, Aldo Narcisi, and Forward Hospitality’s Bobby Rutter and Michael Schwartz. SeeSaw’s concept embraces both dining and entertainment with the upper floor providing a lounge and club atmosphere, dubbed (on their website) “Short North’s Premier Nightlife & Game Day Destination.” The lower level is for full-service dining, including brunch on the weekends. The food is described as wood-fired modern American sharables. SeeSaw is located at 906 N. High St. Doors open at 4 p.m. Brunch is served from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. They are closed Monday and Tuesday. Call 614-502-0020 or visit www.seesawcolumbus.com to learn more.

Poindexter Coffee

Poindexter Coffee opened September 6 at 750 N. High St. The brand is found only in Graduate Hotel locations; it launched the same day as the hotel. Situated on the ground floor, the cafe faces the street at the north end of the building. Open to the public, Poindexter is a cafe by day and a bar by night serving a limited selection of food and liquor. Breakfast is served all day. Pizza and pastries are a convenient repast for hotel guests on the go. An academic-themed wall consisting entirely of pencils is one of many reminders throughout the hotel that this is a Columbus college-themed operation. The cafe is open 7 days from 6:30am to 11 p.m. The phone number is 614-484-1900.

Other Openings

Other recent openings include the Indian restaurant Rooh at 685 N. High, Woodhouse Vegan Cafe at 851 N. Fourth St., Ruth's Chris Steak House across from the Convention Center, and the Moxy Columbus Short North hotel at 800 N. High where Haiku restaurant operated before closing three years ago.

Belgian Iron Wafel Closes

Belgian Iron Wafel Company at 19 W. Russell St. closed at the end of September. Owners Aimee Harper and Brandon Harper launched the eatery in January 2019 after spending over a year remodeling and updating the space with a second floor mezzanine, a picture window and upgrades to meet zoning requirements.

The restaurant’s specialty was Liège-style Belgian waffles that included a vegan gluten-free variety they carefully developed, which may have been the only one in the country. They expressed regret about the closing and gratitude to customers on their Facebook page in September. The story behind the closing was revealed to me recently in a phone conversation with the couple.

To make a long story short, the first contractor they hired made a mess of it, creating havoc in their lives and draining their pocketbooks. The contractor was in the space over seven months beyond the contract deadline before the couple asked him to leave, and about half of the work had to be redone. “They weren’t really capable of doing things that they said they were able to do,” said Aimee. Dealing with the shoddy contractor, whose work ethic and incompetence left them faced with massive bills, a lawsuit, and months of wasted work and time, was very painful.

“We had a great customer base,” said Brandon. “Our reviews were good. We couldn’t keep it afloat with everything that needed to be paid and was coming due.” “That is part of the reason why Brandon and I are still bitter about it,” said Aimee, “because we had a good thing, and it was an awesome location.”

“It was the most devastating thing that Brandon and I have ever been through” Aimee added, “but the thing that stung the most was that when we went into this, we were like, yes, restaurants don’t make a lot of money in the first two to three years, so we had working capital. We were ready and prepared for that lack of profitability from the beginning, so when our contractor really really messed up the project and then bailed on us, we had to use all that money, and so we didn’t have the ability to be flexible if something wasn’t profitable and then on top of that having incurred more debt that made it not profitable, so it was really just kind of a double-edged sword, just two things hitting us.”

Aimee believes that as an attorney, she might be able to help others. She’s considering refocusing her career a little on how to help small businesses navigate the construction process. “I want to do something to make sure that this does not happen to people who had dreams like we had, and have it destroyed like ours,” she said. Still, they hope that whoever takes over the space will benefit from the beauty of what they accomplished. “As much as we lost, we still want to lift up whoever is there,” said Aimee. “The person who ends up in our location, we really want it to be somebody like us. They want to open this cool concept and they can do that and we want them to.”

Additional Closings

Four other eateries closed recently in this area: & Juice Company, Fabian’s Deep Dish Pizza, Fuzzy’s Tacos, and Harvey & Ed’s Delicatessen. Harvey & Ed’s was a Cameron Mitchell operation. It couldn’t have been a casual decision to close down and come up with a different concept (as they propose), considering all the media hype about the family history tied into the deli’s name. If anybody has the hospitality industry down to a science, it’s Mitchell. But it failed. The restaurant business has a high failure rate, so one can comfortably assume that this was an economic decision and that there is no magical formula to figure out what will work!

& Juice Co. closed its Italian Village location at 991 N. Fourth St. in September after a little over a year in operation selling cold pressed juice and vegan treats. Owner Eliah Thomas-Stephenson stated in an e-mail that many factors went into the closing, but the Clintonville location remains open, and a newly branded business called Adventure Vegan Cafe is in the works as they continue to restructure. The location in Italian Village presented challenges with low visibility, low pedestrian traffic, as well as awkward accessibility in front that consisted of stairs at either end of a long walkway enclosed by a rail above street level.

Revolution Cycles Crosses the Finish Line

When Jared Cavileer began selling Segways in the Short North 13 years ago, he wanted to make a difference. Getting people out of their cars to ease traffic congestion and pollution would make the world a better place. Although the Segways sold and his business prospered, the concept never truly caught on in Columbus, said Cavileer. Similarly, the electric-assisted Ecobikes he sold were a step in the right direction, but expensive, and for the most part an unnecessary luxury for Columbus flatlanders.

After four years, Cavileer – wanting to expand his customer base – closed the Short North Segway shop at 765 N. High St. and launched Revolution Cycles selling standard bicycles in what is now Ethel’s Bar next to the Garden Theater. A year later, in 2012, he moved the shop two doors north into a wonderful, large space at 1201 N. High where Revolution Cycles grew to become one of the best bike shops in Columbus.

All of this came to a screeching halt in September when Cavileer decided enough was enough. “I had taken in another job and overworked myself,” he said. “I got to a point where I wasn’t happy, and I decided I wanted to spend time with my kids while they were young.” So now Revolution Cycles is history, with most of the inventory sold off and in storage. Selling the business would take too long, a year or more, he explained, so he simply pulled up stakes and shut down.

Cavileer said what he enjoyed most about working at Revolution Cycles was seeing young people change over the years. “Here’s a guy that would hang out at the shop when he’s 15 or 16 because he thought it was cool, and the next thing I know he’s an adult and he’s running a business for me. I have several people that would just come and hang out and end up working for me. It’s nice to see that, young people becoming responsible adults.”

With one of Cavileer’s Segway dealerships still in operation in Akron, and a subdealer in Cincinnati, he is not completely cut off from the business world, but now he’ll have more time to spend with his wife Lauren and their two children, Penelope, 7, and Scout, 4.

“It’s been 15 years of six days a week. I want to be home for dinner. I want two-day weekends,” he said.

Bicycling could be on the agenda for those two-day weekends. His wife recently took an interest in cycling. She never owned a bicycle as an adult, he said. “We had one small bike left, so I gave it to her the last couple days.”

Revolution Cycles will be missed, but the family fun has just begun.

See also: 2009 Article Ecobike conquers hills and headwinds

Email margaret@shortnorth.com or call 614-251-0656 with neighborhood news items for the Short North Gazette.

Email the Editor margaret@shortnorth.com

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