Potbelly to join businesses on St. Paul

Potbelly Sandwich Shop is replacing Cloud Nine Clothing on St. Paul Street. Renovations are currently underway to transform the former clothing boutique into an eatery.

There is no specific date set for Potbelly’s opening, but it will be sometime this spring, according to Karen Elsbury, Eastern Zone Real Estate Manager for the sandwich chain.

“We want to become the neighborhood sandwich shop by embracing Johns Hopkins andthe surrounding neighborhood communities, including Charles Village, Roland Park, Guilford, Hampden, Wyman Park and others. We strive to be the best place for lunch and feel we are a great fit for the students and surrounding neighborhoods,” Elsbury said.

Potbelly is replacing Cloud Nine, which was one of the few clothing stores in the area. This year marks the enterprise’s 15th in business, five of which included the St. Paul Street location. However, the company may not definitively be absent from St. Paul Street. The company now owns four stores in Baltimore.

Randy Sayotovich, the company’s owner, explained that the original plans for the retail development of St. Paul Street included bringing businesses to both sides of the street, and that if this is implemented, students could potentially see the boutique on St. Paul once more.

“We might be back once they finally redo the other side of the street, which was the plan six years ago. That was the plan. They were going to do both sides of the street, it was going to be really cool—[they had said] there’s going to be a grocery store, parking, a wine bar, outdoor seating— all that stuff fell apart once the economy tanked. If that building gets redone, we would be interested in coming back and being part of the neighborhood again,” Sayotovich said.

He and his wife were persuaded by an attractive leasing agreement.

However,  when the original agreement expired, the couple was forced to once again move locations, allowing Potbelly to lease the space instead.

“[The developers] took us over there with a pretty good rent deal for five years — we had a five year lease — and it just came up, and they didn’t want to renew our lease because they wanted someone to pay a lot more in rent,” Sayotovich said. “We basically couldn’t connect and agree on the lease or the correct rent. They wanted way too much money for a locally owned, small boutique kind of thing, and we ended up moving —or had to move out. They basically kicked us out today while Potbelly takes the space. So now we’re back on the Avenue again. We moved back to Hampden.”

He explained that Cloud Nine really benefitted from the University and felt like a part of the Hopkins Community.

“We had a great time over there. We liked it. We noticed a difference when the students weren’t there... You can even tell when students were gone or there were exams and stuff like that. We could also tell when there were different events at Hopkins or new students coming in, or orientation, or any kind of special thing, or Hopkins lacrosse —anything like that. We would see an influx in sales,” Sayotovich said. “And that was just nice about it; we had the Hopkins students and we had just neighborhood people as well. We were happy there, it’s just that we couldn’t afford the rent that they wanted to pay.”

Sayotovich explained that he understands that a restaurant will be more frequented than a clothing store.

“I guess what I say is that people eat every day and they’ll never buy clothes every day. You can also see it if you’re standing outside the door: if you look at Chipotle, I mean, there’s a line every day, all the time. I’m sure Potbelly will do well, but we had to leave.”

Freshman Ben Wheeler was excited for additional selections in restaurant choices, yet he was quick to point out that there are many similar alternatives on the same stretch of St. Paul Street.

“I think the opening of another sandwich shop in the Baltimore area is a little bit repetitive considering we already have Subway on the corner of St. Paul, we have Sandella’s, which is basically the same thing, Chipotle is relatively similar with their burritos, and there’s also Quiznos down the street. However, I like the fact that there are additional options with Potbelly. So it has its ups and downs,” Wheeler said.

Junior Ollie McNeely also noted an apparent redundancy in adding another sandwich shop to a block already riddled with similar establishments.

“I think it’s a little excessive with the amount of sandwich places in the area. It’ll be nice to have a variety in sandwiches I can get, but it may have been nice to have something completely different, like a sushi place. It might have [also] been nice if it had been a CVS or Rite Aid. Honestly, I’ll probably still eat there because it’s there, but it doesn’t really add anything to Charles Village,” he said.