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‘Sweets gets new downtown location
by Gregory R. Norfleet · News · January 28, 2016
More visibility, more foot traffic and outdoor seating prompted Main Street Sweets to relocate from the east end to the “heart of downtown,” owner Stephen Grace said.
The new location at 104 1/2 East Main Street may tentatively in the first week of February.
The old location at 309 East Main, attached to the west end of Mexico Lindo restaurant, closed on Christmas Eve as the business scheduled to be out by Dec. 31.
Grace hoped to reopen in just a few weeks, but since he cannot control food and health inspectors’ schedules, he figured if he has to remain closed longer, January is the best month to do it.
He opened Main Street Sweets in June 2010, so the business stayed in its location for 5 1/2 years. In the summer of 2014, a big storm flooded the downtown and closed his business — as well as several others — for several days.
Yet that only played a small part in Grace’s reason to move the restaurant.
“It’s nice to be out of the flood zone,” he said, “but it’s just an added bonus. I’m less concerned with flooding.”
Ironically, Main Street Sweets will move into the former location of Pink Pony, a competing business that opened in June 2011 and closed last year.
Grace said the space is about the same inside, though he has already knocked out some walls for remodeling and repainting.
“Our lease was up for renewal, so it was a timing thing,” he said of the move.
He hopes to benefit from more parking downtown, and more pedestrian traffic coming out of the Hoover Complex.
“It’s easier to see and get to,” Grace said. “Just a couple blocks — it’s ‘seek us out’ versus ‘stumble upon us.’”
Grace said he opened the restaurant because there was no ice cream place in town. “Main Street Sweets” is a name from other ice cream shops in West Branch and he wanted to keep the name alive.
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