By David Edward Clark
In four to six weeks, the East College Street Project will be complete and The Slow Train Café will no longer be the only draw for students to the east side of town.
The building behind Slow Train will have an Asian food market that will also serve Korean food to go. Beside the grocery store will be a Tansu (a form of fancy Japanese cabinets) studio, and an accounting firm. A barbershop and a psychologist’s office will be on the second floor, though there is still space left for another shop.
On the corner of Pleasant and East College, a local couple is opening a gourmet pizza parlor. “They’re going to have like butternut squash and goat cheese pizza,” said Josh Rosen of Sustainable Community Associates. They should be opening their doors by mid-November.
SCA tried its hardest to bring an Indian restaurant to Oberlin, with no such luck. “It’s a tough climate for restaurants to go to banks and get business loans,” said Rosen. “But I should add, there’s still one 1,600 square feet space that an Indian restaurant could go into.”
In addition to retail and office space, the East College Street Project contains 33 mixed income condos. Over the summer, those who bought condos moved in. “All the affordable housing rentals are already taken,” said Rosen. Only eight condos are left that will be sold at the market rate.
In terms of the project’s LEED status, which measures a building’s environmental friendliness, SCA will not know their rating for sure for another six months. However, Rosen is confident that they will achieve their target goal of LEED Gold.
For their next endeavor, SCA is “investigating a two to three megawatt solar project with the City of Oberlin and Oberlin College,” said Rosen. “It just feels like energy is the next thing to do so that’s what we’re working on.”
SCA aims to stay local. “It’s been our home and we’d like to keep working here if possible,” said Rosen. They are also looking into development opportunities around the Cleveland area.
On October 9th, SCA is holding an open house in the courtyard behind Slow Train. At 2 p.m., there will be tours of the entire project and at 6 p.m. there will be music, pie and cider for all.