Summer closings to reshape area retail

Retailers will be forced out when Houston hall and U. Plaza close. Kevin Long is among friends -- the brothers of Phi Delta Theta. As the 36-year-old deliveryman for Fiesta Jr. Pizza walks through Phi Delt's door, a dozen hungry students eagerly relieve him of two paper bags full of sandwiches and salads. Fiesta, the menu of choice for the Locust Walk fraternity, has been feeding Phi Delt for as long as anyone can remember. The tradition has less than two months to live. On June 30, leases for Fiesta and 10 other stores housed in the University Plaza building at 38th and Walnut streets expire. The stores may continue to operate until August 14, when they have to leave the complex, as the site is slated for a new Wharton School building. Another 15 retailers in the Houston Hall mall must be out the door by May 30. The 102-year-old edifice is closing for renovations as part of the $69 million Perelman Quadrangle project, which is designed to create a student center linking several neighboring buildings. For Fiesta and the 21 other stores which have not found space elsewhere on campus, it's closing time. After 23 years, the pictures of Phi Delta Theta brothers on the diner's walls will come down and the doors will close for the last time. Theodora Karros, one of four owners, said there is a message in the store's troubles. "For 25 years, Fiesta was good to pay the rent and pay the bills," she said. "Now, it's not academic enough [for Penn]." "It's like my father always said: It's the big fishes and the little fishes," Karros said. "We're the little fishes." The little fishes While no two stores have quite the same story to tell, their predicaments fall into three general categories. The franchise chains -- Subway, Burger King and My Favorite Muffin -- will not be seriously inconvenienced. Indeed, Burger King and My Favorite Muffin have other University City locations on 40th Street. When they go out of business, only employees and customers stand to be affected. Smaller local chains -- Vibes, Out of Time Comics, Hair House and CDs to Go -- will take more of a financial hit, but can transfer inventory to other stores and go on. One such store, Out of Time Comics, hopes its customers will follow it to its Center City location. The business serves a primarily repeat clientele, mostly subscribers to various comic-book series. Since no other University City store serves the comic book market, D.J. Chagnon, an assistant manager, remains hopeful students will head downtown. Finally, there are the little fishes, by far the largest group. These owner-operated, single-location stores have become a vanishing breed at Penn. For some -- University Photo, Muffins 'N' More and The Seed -- the closing is a segue into retirement. For others, the search for a new location continues. Rose's Florist says it continues to hope for a space elsewhere on campus. The store, operated by a pair of Penn graduates, has nowhere else to go. Houston Hall's cozy retail niches were perfect for Campus T-Shirts, which serves primarily as an outlet for the owner's mail-order, screen-printed t-shirt business. But Grace Banasiewicz, who works at the store, said that similar spaces don't really exist in many places. "It makes it tough, because [the store] can't afford the rent" for larger locations, she said. Only a matter of time Penn purchased the land for Sansom Common 20 years ago, using it as a parking lot in the interim. Then, too, stores were forced out of business as the University expanded. But Tom Lussenhop, Penn's managing director for real estate, said the contrast between Penn's history and Penn's current plans is telling. University Plaza has long been an anomaly, rising only one story in the choicest part of campus, and serving no academic function. Lussenhop noted that retailers have been told for years that it was only a matter of time before the site was utilized in a manner befitting its location in the center of campus. Now, plans to build a six- or seven-story facility for Wharton classrooms and offices are well underway. That, says Lussenhop, is progress, however unfortunate the loss of the University Plaza retailers may be. The situation at Houston Hall is similar. Penn has long lacked a student center, which the renovations to Houston Hall, while forcing the stores out of the mall, will allow it to create. As for the net loss in retail, Lussenhop says Penn's eyes have turned westward for future retail opportunities. "My hope is that the significant demand for retail will begin to be met along 40th Street and its environs," he said. And then there were five Lussenhop also stressed that some of the most popular stores have received space on campus, though the shortage of such openings has kept the number low. Five stores have either received or are negotiating for space on campus. Most prominent among them is the University Bookstore, which will double its area to 50,000 square feet when it becomes the anchor tenant in Sansom Common. University Jewelers will move three blocks east to the 3401 Walnut complex, and the Pennsylvania Book Center is negotiating for a site there as well. Both are longtime campus businesses. For University Copy Service, the new location will remain even after the store renews operations on a smaller scale in the renovated Houston Hall. The store will move to St. Leonard's Court at 39th and Chestnut streets. Another Houston Hall retailer, Auntie Anne's Soft Pretzels, remains in negotiations with Penn for the space currently occupied by Cinnabon in the 3401 complex. Pink slips Employees of all 26 stores face a uniform scenario in the next two months: unemployment. Ron Holmes has worked at Fiesta for 19 years. His job? "You name it, I do it," Holmes said. As he munched on a steak and fries, Holmes said he had no idea what to do with himself come July 1. "I'll feel strange sitting at home," he said. And the future? "Maybe they'll give me a job [in Sansom Common]," Holmes speculated. "I might go into the kitchen and give 'em some of my expertise." The total number of workers out of a job is uncertain. Some will move to other locations. Many are Penn students who work part-time. A few may find jobs in Sansom Common. Barnes & Noble, for one, has promised to provide job opportunities to all current bookstore employees. But the bookstore is expanding, a position none of the other stores find themselves in. And so it's the pink slip for four employees at Pizza Pitt, and six at Fiesta, and the employees of Vibes, and on and on. One Pizza Pitt employee who asked to remain anonymous had a parting request: "Tell Mrs. Rodin I'm going on unemployment." Chagnon is luckier. He has a job at Out of Time Comics' Center City store. Long said he thinks his uncle may be able to get him a job with the city. The more things change The face of campus retail has shifted, leaving the shops in Stouffer Triangle alone in the area southeast of 38th and Walnut Streets. But for students, that may not matter. Perelman Quad will reopen in two years' time with a variety of food outlets operated by Bon Appetit Management Co. The Class of 1920 Commons and the Penn Student Agencies commissaries also sell food in the heart of campus. And Eat at Joe's will take its place as the campus' only diner sometime this summer, replacing Fiesta. Some of the dry-goods and service stores may leave a larger hole in the campus retail picture. Students will have to walk to Flower Emporium's main location, in the Penn Tower Hotel, for Valentine's Day roses and Center City will be the nearest place to follow the adventures of your favorite superhero. And Spruce Street CDs will be the only music store on campus -- down from a total of four -- although Barnes & Noble will have a very limited music section. Auld Lang Syne Still, there is a sense that the loss runs deeper than numbers or types of stores. Maria Kouroupakis co-owns Rose's Florist, a business she started as a graduate student 18 years ago to help pay for her education. "You feel young [working with students]," Kouroupakis said. "I never felt like I got older."