NILES Best Buy, IHOP to open near Eastwood Mall

Other additions planned for the Niles shopping complex include a dollar store.
THE VINDICATOR, YOUNGSTOWN
By CYNTHIA VINARSKY
VINDICATOR BUSINESS WRITER
NILES -- Vacant spaces are filling up fast in the Eastwood Mall complex, but two of the newcomers won't open until after the holiday shopping season.
Deals Nothing Over A Dollar, a general merchandise chain based in Bridgeton, Mo., will open Saturday in an 11,802-square-foot section of the space formerly occupied by Ames Department Store in the Great East Plaza.
The retailer started hiring about two weeks ago. Deals is owned by the Supervalu grocery store chain, one of the largest in the country with annual revenues topping $20 billion.
Best Buy
Best Buy, a Minneapolis-based consumer electronics and appliance retailer, is still working on its renovation of a 35,000-square-foot space, also in the former Ames building. Ken Kollar, Eastwood Mall general manager, said the store probably won't open until late winter or early spring.
Best Buy announced plans last summer to occupy about one third of the space Ames left vacant when it closed in the spring. The store will employ between 100 and 125 full- and part-time workers.
Best Buy also has a store in Boardman.
Thom Sharp, a spokesman for Eastwood Mall Complex owner Cafaro Co., said company officials are in talks with a third retailer interested in leasing the remaining space left vacant by Ames, but he could not divulge the company's name.
Restaurant
International House of Pancakes, a California restaurant chain, is completing work on a new 44,500-square-foot eatery on Niles-Cortland Road S.E. in front of Home Depot.
Kollar said the restaurant is working with the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services for hiring, and interviews are being conducted at the mall through Wednesday. He expects the eatery to open in about three weeks, probably after Christmas.
IHOP Corp., the restaurant chain's parent company, is also opening a new restaurant on Boardman-Poland Road in Boardman on the site of a former Country Kitchen restaurant.
Best known for its breakfast menu, IHOP also serves lunch and dinner.
Flea market
Super Flea Mor, a flea market, opened with 200 vendors Saturday in the Great East Plaza in the site of a former Super Phar-Mor store.
Mid America Events, a promotions company known as presenter of the Mahoning Valley Rib Burn-off and the Canfield Haunted House, is operating the flea market. Mid America has a one-year lease on the 50,000-square-foot building.
Kollar said he believes the flea market will bring some new consumers to the mall and the surrounding shopping and entertainment complex. "It's doing exactly what we had hoped it would do," he said. "It's bringing a lot of new people to our complex, some of them people who had never been here before."
vinarsky@vindy.com