When a friend sent Shane Wynn a picture of the “coming soon” sign for a downtown Akron grocery store kitty-corner to where she plans to open The Mercantile market next month, she first thought the picture must be AI.
“That can’t possibly be real,” Wynn recalled thinking Tuesday, when she learned of the planned market at 159 S. Main St. “Nobody wanted to do this for 15 years.”
Now, Wynn is contemplating whether it still makes sense to open at all. While she may not have a choice in the matter — she has a lease in Cascade Plaza’s PNC Building — the yet-unnamed market “makes our business plan unviable,” she said…