CLEVELAND — Despite challenges from the COVID pandemic that all businesses had to weather, Winking Lizard, Colossal Cupcakes, Anna in the Raw, and Let's Talk Let’s Eat are opening up spaces to AECOM building at 1300 East 9th Street in downtown Cleveland in the next six to nine months.
It will be a second downtown location for Colossal Cupcakes, which will keep its spot in the 5th Street Arcades.
Winking Lizard will close its location in the Galleria and move to a new 4,500-square-foot location that will also have a patio and additional outdoor seating inside the AECOM building.
The increasing number of downtown workers returning to their offices helped move these new lease-signings along.
“We came back on June 1,” said Newmark Vice Chairman Terry Coyne. “You’re starting to see people coming back between now and…Labor Day, but I think for a lot of people, it’s Fourth of July.”
Another aspect was the $14 million investment that AECOM building’s owner, Rugby Realty, made starting in 2019 and lasting through the coronavirus lockdown. Coyne says the pandemic didn’t really slow the building’s renovation and instead resulted in refurbished office, retail, and amenity space that attracted tenants during the pandemic.
“So yea, we did steal from other buildings, there’s no question,” said Coyne. “But I think that we stole because we invested and it was also a function of the other buildings that didn’t invest.”
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