With a soft opening over the weekend and a slamming day on Monday, The Korner Kaffé is off to a great start. Even though I have not had a chance to try the food, I must say that the interior layout is already an attraction. Even without the front awning in place or the tattoo-inspired art on the walls, the café is different. Actually, there are two totally different draws inside. On the right (as you walk in) is the casual coffee house where the live music is hosted, while on the left is the more diner-esque seating arrangement.
It's so nice to see life back in that location. This place went from a wasted commercial space to a neighborhood hotspot overnight. Seeing the conversion got me to wondering about the last few remaining vacant holdouts on Elmwood and on Allen. Why are they vacant? And how long will it take for them to fill up?
For example, what's up with the former Sweet Tooth location on Elmwood? And the Drool spot on Allen – that building’s façade is half missing with exposed concrete where the bricks used to be (hellooo City Hall?) There is still no action in the renovated Boosing building (I wonder why?). The empty dueling retro storefronts (Mix and Moda) are still vacant, but those are tough to fill due to the lack of foot-traffic. Mike Attardo still has one of his modern white commercial storefronts open – there were two until Naava of London Hair Salon moved in.
I do hear that negotiations are close with the vacant Fleet Feet location as well as the Elmwood Village Bagel space… those would be nice to see occupied. Recent success stories filling in the rest of the gaps include The Thirsty Buffalo (on the way), Tabree, Wine Thief (on the way), Comfort Zone Café, new ETS, Bank of America, Evans National Bank, Elmwood Market – still need to fill the neighboring X-Cel too. Plus Rick Cycle and NEO are set along with The Falafel Bar 2 (coming soon), and theSpot/Brodo expansion is still supposedly on the way (filling the New World storefront).
It would still be cool to see some of the residential areas filled in with commercial businesses (after the empty spaces are filled in). Of course we should all cross our fingers that the Latina Market block gets razed in order to make way for a multi-use development that utilizes the footprint properly. That and the Kentucky Fried Chicken corner – now that would be a dream!