My Impressions of the New Heinen's Store in Downtown Cleveland

Heinen's on corner of Euclid and E. 9th Street, Cleveland, Ohio

Yes, this is the new Heinen's in downtown Cleveland.  I certainly doesn't look anything like a grocery store to me.  This is actually the old Cleveland Trust Bank building.   I heard so much hoopla about it that I decided to go exploring on my lunch hour and take some pictures to share my impressions of it on my blog and see what others think of it.  If you enlarge the picture, you can see it still says "Cleveland Trust Company" on the top.

It has pretty fancy doors for a supermarket, don't you think?  Only the one is used though.

Here is what you see when you first walk in--a food court:

The ceiling is SO that I couldn't even get it in the picture and still get the floor part too.  This is where most of the people are.  It was 1:30 when I went over so this is their lunch time crowd.  Around on the first floor are various places to buy food and eat there or take it out.  The sections are meat, fish, bakery, salad bar, fruit bar, prepared foods.  It's actually quite nice and there's an energy you feel as you go in.

Off to the left through an entranceway is the produce.  It's actually an adjoining building and you either walk along a ramp or down a few steps to get to this area where the groceries are.  They have lots of narrow aisles stocked with all kinds of food and also an aisle with greeting cards.

As you can see from these pictures, the floor is concrete with just a small patch of tile that looks like they forgot to remove.  It basically gave me the feeling of walking through a warehouse.  This is the widest aisle I saw.

Here is another section.  I people were few and far between in this area of the store.  I'm thinking at this point, "How are they going to stay in business with all this inventory and only the food court being filled with people?"

I continued walking, looking for something I might purchase and way in the back of the last aisle I found ice cream.  I could see me buying some of this in the summer to have at work.

Farther up that same aisle I found the milk I like.  They had it on sale today, 2 for $6, but normally it is $4.19 compared to Giant Eagle at $3 something.

The bakery section looked pretty good too, although much smaller than the one at Giant Eagle.  I only saw one shopping cart!  They have tote bags for sale at the door and I did see someone with a basket.

The Grocery Part of the Store (adjoining building from outside is between the two buses)

I didn't go upstairs, but that is where they have the alcoholic beverages.  Maybe I'll check out the second floor this week.

So what do you think?  Oh, the other problem is that there is no convenient parking right around the store.  It's for those who live and work downtown who walk.  I'll be curious to see how long they last.


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