Patch has a pic of a hand-written sign attached to Melrose on Ponce’s signage announcing that they are having a “Store Closing Sale” this Thursday through Saturday. According to the report, overhead costs had become too much to keep the store open.
Owner Shirlyn Englisby will still be available for monogramming. She can be reached at MelroseOnPonce@gmail.com, according to the post.
Photo courtesy of Google Streetview
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That’s sad. I’m sorry to see them go. Good luck to the owners.
Better get some cash together because this store has nice things. I will miss it and its former neighbor, Blue Elephant. Evidently my buying power and loyalty is not sufficient to keep good stores in town.
I hope this is the only one this quarter. We need retail downtown.
Silly Fats, we don’t need retail downtown. Decatur can just annex another large commercial property in nearby Dekalb and make up the loss that way.
(Just kidding!!)
I wonder what will become of this valuable piece of property?
Well, Blue Elephant is some sort of office space now. And that’s probably the most comparable property, no?
If I remember correctly there is a backstory involving the development of the condos with relation to this property. Perhaps a lease that survived the sale of the property to Cartel that has now probably run out.
Expanding my comments. I know Davis BP sold the empty lot next to TDS to Cartel, and they wanted to roll that lot and the Melrose lot into the condo project. So my bet would be look for “Phase II” of the condo project.
Is there really enough room there for a Phase 2?
The 2 residential lots are fairly deep. I used to rent the empty lot when Ya Ya’s ( before Marlay’s and Angel ) needed parking and it fit over 24 cars. Since the condos are done, perhaps a stand alone commercial bldg and the rest parking – if they don’t have too much storm water retention costs.
I’ve heard from many a closing retail business in Decatur that the rent is too high or the “overhead” (rent + utilities?) is too high. I guess it’s not too high for office space. And the word here on DM is that a restaurant has to serve alcohol to make it. So are we to become a city of offices, bars, schools, and churches? Where will all the workers, bartenders, and pastors eat?
They would eat at restaurants and at home, just like they do now.
I’m always sort of amazed these sorts of stores (Blue Moon is another one that comes to mind) can make it in a relatively high-rent area like Decatur. Retail has to be a tough business these days. It does seem restaurants with significant alcohol sales are going to be the best bet in Decatur, though the breakfast and lunch-only places seem to do quite well here, and they don’t serve alcohol.
Does it make a difference if the business owns the building/property or not?
It’s probably safe to assume that if the building or the property is paid off it makes a huge difference.
I guess it would be in poor taste to start a “death pool” for Decatur restaurants and retail businesses.
Bad taste plus it might actually influence consumer behavior. As an example, I definitely would not have bought a store card for Mocha Java (or whatever that place was called in Simpson Plaza (Ale Yeah, Avellini’s, Revolution Doughnuts, hair place) if I’d known that folks thought it was going out of business. And I was very foolish not to check my stock of gift certificates and remember that I had one for Blue Elephant before the store closed for good.
But it IS a fun idea as long as we do it offline. Good bar or car game. Usually, if I love a place but it isn’t annoyingly crowded all the time, it’ll be gone soon. On the other hand, there’s a few places that have persisted around town for years without my ever seeing any signs of properity or why they even exist.
You should have asked me about Mocha Java! I pretty much knew from reading the website it would make it 5 minutes!
How so? I’m real naive. It was in a good location, the staff seemed friendly, the store had an area for toddler play, and my lattes were fine. I know that a mothers group used it as a weekly meeting place for them and their toddlers. I thought it would do great, but obviously not. I assumed that it’s failure had to do with the failure of the economy and the fact that not much else was in that plaza then. I loved the scrapbooking place but did wonder about whether a sufficient customer base for scrapbooking existed. What do you think was the cause of the failure?
Now, when I like a business in Decatur, I consciously work on not becoming too attached. And I have no illusion that I could ever be enough of a clever entrepreneur to open the children’s shoestore/bagel place that I crave.
By the way, just remembered that the correct name was Moxie Java, not Mocha Java. Not to be confused with Mocha Match in the East Decatur complex with Figo’s. The closing of the latter did not surprise me. It was a big space with little visibility.
Push Push Theater has moved into the old Mocha Match space at EDS.
Very poor taste. You’d have to be a real asshole to do that. It’s not polite to speculate on which local businesses might be having trouble or on the verge of closing. However, it’d be perfectly acceptable to start naming the places we WISH would close…
Yeah, and I would get Keith Richards and lose anyway. SNL should bring back Chevy Chase and make Hugo Chavez into another Franco.
Chevy Chase. Speaking of a-holes.