Following a wave of store closures in Downtown Ithaca in late 2025 and early 2026, 10 new businesses have announced their openings on The Commons this spring. Recent store openings follow the implementation of a retail study that calls for attracting higher-income customers to the shopping district.

Ithaca has levels of income inequality that surpass the U.S. average, marked by a high cost of living and low wages. While some locals are excited for commercial growth, others are nervous about its impact on income inequality and how it will benefit local residents, if at all.

Ashley Cake, an Ithaca native who owned popular nightlight event spaces the Watershed and the Downstairs, said that strengthening local commerce needs to prioritize community well–being instead of catering to affluent visitors. Cake said she makes about $23,000 over 10 months in her role as a program aide. Median household income in the City of Ithaca is $48,784. 

“We haven’t had any fast, affordable, healthy food or places for people to rest … or even places for people to go to the bathroom,” Cake said. “We don’t have things for the people that actually live here [but] for rich tourists who can just go into their hotel bathrooms.”

When she ran her business, Cake took a community-oriented approach as a living wage employer and had staff trained in bartender intervention and offered free Narcan. Cake said the Watershed and the Downstairs closed because customers could not afford to go out for drinks and attend events. The city’s living wage, which is what a full-time worker needs to earn to cover their family’s basic needs without public assistance, is $25.08 compared to the $16 per hour minimum wage.

The retail study — which was commissioned by the City of Ithaca and Downtown Ithaca Alliance (DIA) in 2023 and completed on March 10 — describes the affluent demographic of customers Downtown should attract as “Yupsters” who “celebrate the artistic and cerebral lifestyle, at least in its more established, less edgy manifestations.”

Conducted by MJB Consulting, the study also identifies visitors or tourists as a key demographic to promote growth. The synopsis of the study from the City of Ithaca and the DIA states that, with “median household incomes exceeding $100,000 … this segment exhibits higher propensity for impulse purchases, provides counter-seasonal demand … demonstrates lower sensitivity to local negative perceptions, and is less concerned about parking price and availability.” Tompkins County visitors spent $301 million in 2023.

Souvenir store Sunny Days of Ithaca is another business that is closing after 12 years because of debt and decreasing foot traffic among other personal reasons, but will continue to offer print production and sales online.

Deirdre Kurzweil, owner of Sunny Days, has a similar approach to Cake’s, thinking beyond just profit while running her business and trying to serve the community. 

“I opened a store that was specifically for people who might not have as much money,” Kurzweil said. “One of the reasons I was inspired was to make it more than just a souvenir shop and to do the Ithaca vibe gift shop [was] because I missed the stores of my youth.”

Kurzweil said that even though she runs a souvenir store, the local customer base has been important in keeping her business running.

“Locals are the only business you have in the first quarter, and there’s few of them to begin with,” Kurzweil said.

Michael Berne, founder and president of MJB Consulting, conducted the retail study and said that the type of retail and commerce activity taking place on The Commons caters to a customer who can afford not to think about the price. 

“We’re trying to analyze what the most promising opportunities are, what’s most likely to be successful or … catalytic,” Berne said. “That’s not making any comment on whether one type of consumer is better than another.” 

Experiential Retail has been a key focus area to create a sense of community, according to DIA CEO Nan Rohrer. Rohrer said DIA distributes $50,000 through retail mini-grants and is also working on providing human resources support to small businesses so that stores can provide a positive retail experience to customers and sustain themselves. 

“The biggest thing that I say [is that] the businesses need you to come spend your money,” Rohrer said. “At the end of the day, [businesses] can’t eat likes on a Facebook page. They can’t pay their rent from a share off an Instagram post. What they can do is live and pay their rent and continue their business when you come in.”

While consumers spending money can boost retail activity, some individuals are hesitant about their expenditures. Ithaca College junior Braedy Dilger was born in Ithaca and raised in the Tompkins County area, and said that while she is excited for growth, she is also discouraged from going down because she does not have much money to spend. 

“A lot of it now is about collectibles or appealing to a higher-paying market because there’s no affordable thrift stores down there,” Dilger said. “It’s a lot of good places for window shopping, but The Commons is not really an area I can easily shop in.”

In line with what Dilger noticed, the retail study identifies vintage and consignment — along with arts and crafts, destination food and beverage and diversified entertainment —  as one of Downtown Ithaca’s niche growth opportunities. 

A list of the businesses that are opening this spring or have already opened on The Commons includes: apparel store Adorn Ithaca, Farm to Feast NY restaurant, clothing store Feel Goods, K–HOUSE Karaoke and Arts Hub, Salt & Pepper restaurant, considered art and merchandise store Seed Bomb, tattoo studio Obsidian Ink, and Atabey Restaurant & Lounge. 

Ian Greer, director of the Ithaca Co-Lab and research professor at Cornell University, said upscale small businesses could be more profitable and combat the competition from big box stores by offering more specialized products or services at a higher value. 

Berne said if a business wants to achieve a lower price point, it has to scale, which may not be possible given the physical constraints — like smaller sizes of storefronts — of The Commons.

“For that reason, these big box stores [like Walmart] that you see along South Meadow have such an advantage when it comes to that low price point,” Berne said. “You can’t really fit that or accommodate that in downtown itself.”

Greer said the strategy of catering to a higher-income consumer base could generate more jobs because of greater commercial activity, but these jobs will be lower-paying. Typically, smaller employers have to hire workers at a lower pay rate to sustain their business.  

“There’s a big elite university here with lots of high earners and that drives up sort of the top of the income distribution,” Greer said. “And then at the bottom of the income distribution are lots of service workers and people who’ve just dropped out of the labor force for whatever reason, just because of the difficulty and dysfunctions of American society.”

In addition to retail activity on The Commons, there have been a series of purchases of local real estate in other localities in Ithaca as well. Over the past 18 months, Ithaca natives Doug Fernandez and John Whalen have bought more than a dozen properties around the West End. Some of these properties include the Boatyard Grill building and the location where Deep Dive was on Taughannock Boulevard. 

Fernandez, who is Whalen’s half-brother and the property manager, said that he wants to eventually employ properties bought for hospitality uses and emphasized that he is moving slowly and intentionally. 

“I definitely understand there has been speculation about what’s occurring,” Fernandez said. “I would just say that we plan to move slowly and our goals are hopefully a net positive for the community.”

A property that Fernandez described as a personal project will also serve as a reptile facility. This is not related to the brothers’ other real estate purchases and could be open to the public to see the reptiles. Fernandez said how exactly the community will engage with this facility is still being explored. 

Cake said the development of a reptile facility speaks to the disparity between the priorities of commercial growth and serving the local community. 

“[They are] being greeted as some sort of benevolent force but [they just have] a hobby of breeding rare snakes and lizards,” Cake said. “This is where all the power gets siphoned … and they don’t have any sense of their responsibility.”

Cake said that as newer businesses begin to dot Downtown Ithaca’s map, she encourages owners and consumers alike to reflect on how they are engaging with retail. 

“If [newer businesses] can hit the gold vein and attract a rich clientele, I don’t think that they’ll have any trouble,” Cake said. “My advice to someone who doesn’t want to necessarily serve rich people is to not open their business downtown.”