A Pat Catan’s arts and crafts store is expected to open in the Delaware Shopping Center by New Year’s.
“Delaware is a market that doesn’t have a lot of competition which we thought would be a niche for us there,” Craig Catanzarite, head of new store development for the third-generation, family-run company. “We liked the demographic, and it was close to Columbus. We also have a store in Mount Vernon. We’ve been getting into markets away from the Cleveland area in the last 10 years.”
Based in Strongsville, near Cleveland, Pat Catan’s is a chain of 28 stores in Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
“We cover the arts, crafts, fine arts, scrapbooking, floral, decorative seasonal, Christmas and we do well at Halloween,” Catanzarite said. “In that particular store, we’ll have custom framing. Someone can bring in a diploma or family heirloom photo, and we have very competitive prices. We do a lot of home decor items, weddings. Anything to do with creativity, we’ll have something in that area.”
“We’re going to try and turn it over to them by the end of October, beginning of November,” said Will Roth, president of William R. Roth & Associates, which owns the shopping center. “We’re excited. It’s great for the shopping center and our other tenants since Kroger left, but this is going to be great for the city. It takes time to get the right tenant, and we believe this is the right tenant.”
“That grocery store, we were able to get the landlord to do a lot of work to get it ready for what we would need,” Catanzarite said. “He’s got to totally renovate that building. New roof, new lighting, new flooring, new facade, heating and cooling. We’ll probably be open by at least Jan. 1.”
The Pat Catan’s Delaware store will have 30 to 35 local employees, recruited from a job fair at or near the store in October or November.
“We look forward to it,” Catanzarite said. “We think Delaware is going to be a good market. I looked at that market five years ago, and couldn’t find a big enough spot. We’re kind of a destination.”
