Sara’s House, with its main shop at Third and High streets, will occupy a 577-square foot space in Mill 2, the large building located between North B Street and the Great Miami River, which also will contain the convention center and a 233-room hotel, as well as the other businesses.
The part of the former Champion Paper mill located west of B Street is where the sports complex will be, with 28 basketball courts, indoor and outdoor soccer/football fields, a fitness complex and recreation areas.
“I think it’s an incredible opportunity and something we had been talking about for a really long time,” said Sara Vallandingham, owner of Sara’s House. Early in the fall, she and her daughter, Maria Peckinpaugh, who together run the store, visited the under-construction $165 million facility that’s expected to attract 10,000 or more athletes and their families on many weekends.
Vallandingham calls her store a “unique boutique in that we offer current, appealing products,” including candles, cocktail mixers, lots of clothing and some furniture. She thinks the unique lighting and golf-club bottle openers they sell will be a hit with the sports crowd.
“You could just catch the vision of the enormity of it, and obviously the belief that Spooky Nook, that team itself, has in that project, it kind of just blew our minds a little bit,” Vallandingham said.
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The opening for the athletic part of the 1.3 million-square-foot complex has been postponed to a later date this year, but Mill 2, where the stores will be, are on track to open in late March, Spooky Nook owner Sam Beiler has said.
“The timing of this happening on our 10-year anniversary is just the icing on the cake,” Vallandingham said. ”It’s incredible, just the size, and the opportunity of it,” Vallandingham said. “We could see ourselves in there.”
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She wanted the shop to be smaller than the main store on High Street, with samples of product lines that will have more availability in the downtown shop.
Another tenant, announced in September, will be Orthopedic Associates of Southwest Ohio, whose medical staff will be the first to aid athletes injured at the sports facility. Orthopedic Associates can X-Ray athletes and others on-site in the 22,000 square feet of space the company will rent, and also can refer patients for imaging such as MRIs at its other facilities.
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