The area’s premiere shopping venue, Franklin Park Mall, will experience some reshuffling of its retail lineup over the next six months, a spokesman for the mall said.
It will get two new eateries and a new small vendor in a kiosk. But it also is losing a jeweler that has been in the mall for two decades.
Last month Franklin Park, which is owned by Chicago-based Starwood Retail Partners, welcomed a new sit-down restaurant, Michigan-based Black Rock Bar & Grill.
On Tuesday, mall spokesman Casey Pogan confirmed that Franklin Park will add another popular restaurant chain in 2019.
BJ’s Restaurant & Brewhouse, a Huntington Beach, Calif., chain that has nearly 200 locations, including 12 in Ohio, is constructing a new 20,000-square-foot restaurant on a mall outlot just north of JC Penney. It plans to open in the early spring and is already hiring employees for the location.
Ms. Pogan said the mall also has signed a lease with a Canadian restaurant chain — Crepe Delicious of Concord, Ontario. The chain, which has 37 locations but only one in the United States, specializes in a variety of crepes and gelato.
Crepe Delicious also plans to open in the spring next year in a center court location previously occupied by Teavana.
Franklin Park also said the mall’s most recent Battle of the Pop-Up Contest, in which entrepreneurs submit business plans and store concepts, was won by Toledo Clothing Co., which opened Nov. 1 in free space provided by the mall in its Macy’s wing. The retailer sells screen-printed t-shirts, hoodies and long-sleeve shirts depicting Toledo city pride.
In another change to the Macy’s wing, Ms. Pogan said apparel retailer H&M moved to a 20,497-square foot space there on Nov. 8 after spending nearly a dozen years in a location in the mall’s J.C. Penney’s wing.
Finally, a long-time tenant, locally-owned J. Foster Jewelers has announced it will close its Franklin Park store likely by year’s end after 21 years operating in the mall. J. Foster was recruited to the mall by the Rouse Co. when it owned the mall in 1997 and decided to expand by adding the Dillard’s wing.
J. Foster owner Phil Kajca said he wanted to remain in the mall but he and Starwood management were unable to come to acceptable terms on a lease extension.
“The economy is good but the mall traffic is down around 20 percent from last year. People’s shopping habits have definitely changed. They are buying more online,” Mr. Kajca said.
He said his business will continue to operate out of a second store in the Shops at Fallen Timbers.
“I think that 20 percent of my customers would go over there fairly quickly. That seems to be a part of the Toledo market that’s growing,” he said.
Mr. Kajca said he contemplated opening a free-standing store somewhere in the Franklin Park shopping corridor, but doing so presents many challenges.
“The only way to do another store would be to have it further up on Monroe Street,” he said. “And it has become so much more difficult with regard to the labor market. It’s more difficult to find people these days that want to work retail hours.”
First Published November 22, 2018, 2:15 a.m.
