Hundreds of residents of Portage County used to meet at Mantua Station every day.
They all lived in or near Mantua and worked in downtown Cleveland, taking the bustling station’s train every morning as their commute.
When the Village of Mantua was established in 1898, 42 years after the station opened, the area became a hub.
“Saturday night, it was hopping,” said Randy Ellis, president of the Mantua-Shalersville Area Chamber of Commerce.
Today, Mantua Village is not the same as it was 126 years ago. It’s gone through many changes that have left it unrecognizable compared to what it once was.
Tragic incidents like fires left shops closed indefinitely, and business owners who once relied on each other lost their morale. Even more setbacks led to the Village of Mantua turning into somewhat of a ghost town.
In recent years, however, dozens of people passionate about the village are bringing it back to life, seeing its potential and working together to give it energy once again. Committees and individuals have worked tirelessly to restore and revitalize Mantua.
Setbacks
All those years ago, the station brought people and traffic into the village, but so did the Buckeye Trail that passes through. Ellis said there became a need for attractions — something to make people stay when they came.
Weber Hardware opened, as well as a butcher, a jeweler, a grocery store and restaurants. People would come to the hardware store to pick up an item and could go to the grocery store on the same trip, seeing friends around town and knowing every person behind the counter.
The village was vibrant until it wasn’t.
In the early 1960s, a car ran into a building that served as a restaurant and grocery store, closing it down. The train station closed in the early 1970s because there wasn’t enough cargo passing through. A 1985 fire burned down Weber Hardware, destroying two buildings and damaging five others.
News footage from the day of the fire shows an anchor saying, “A place the size of a village like Mantua loses most of a city block, it’s lost most of its downtown.”
When those businesses closed, the others suffered.
“We all rely on each other,” Ellis said. “When those businesses closed, then a few less people would come to town … We lost customers and traffic because of that. It just got real stagnant for a while.”
Everything kind of deteriorated, Ellis said. None of the businesses that closed ever opened again.
Restoration
Years later, a big step was taken when the Downtown Mantua Revitalization Committee was founded in 2007.
Toomas Tubalkain, president of the DMRC, said the committee’s mission is to restore and beautify the village, as well as get the community involved.
Tubalkain said the original president, Edie Benner, was incredibly energetic and passionate about doing good for the community, setting the group up for success.
They do village cleanups, sponsor the Triple Trail Fest each year, hold an annual Art on the Hill event to fundraise and give small businesses grants to beautify their business.
“They have been tirelessly working on it for years,” said Ann Ellis, owner of Bibury & Co. and one of the recipients of a small business encouragement grant.
One of the reasons the DMRC was started in the first place, Tubalkain said, was to fix a crumbling set of stairs built during the ’30s. In July, the project was finally completed.
Ellis said the new sidewalk is a significant improvement to make drivers on Route 44 notice the town. It has lights, ramps and flowers.
Tubalkain said the next goal is to bring the facades of the storefronts back to the way they looked when they were built. The DMRC is also working to make all storefronts handicap-accessible and safe.
Leadership
Along with the DMRC working in the background to improve Mantua’s appearance, Ellis said there are a lot of new faces in charge who are making change happen.
Ellis is the longest-serving leader among the chamber of commerce, Mantua Village, the school board and the DMRC, and he has only been in his position since June of 2023.
He was instrumental in revamping the chamber, as well as Carrie Leister, one of the owners of Restoration 44 Coffee Company, said Ann Ellis, who is also Randy’s wife.
“All this fresh leadership has a duty to improve what our predecessors started and take the community to the next stop on this journey,” Randy Ellis said.
New retail activity
When Restoration 44 opened in 2019, it marked the beginning of a chain of stores to follow.
“Pretty much from the day it opened, people were saying, ‘Wow, this is really too good for Mantua; we’re not used to something as nice as this,’” Tubalkain said. “[The owners] had their response perfectly prepped, and they said, ‘No, this is Mantua.’ They brought that right attitude.”
Tubalkain said they came in with the mindset that Mantua is every bit as good as any other small town in Northeast Ohio, and it should look the part, too.
“We felt like Eeyore,” Tubalkain said. “They really did something to sort of change the personality of the place.”
Surprisingly, the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 benefited Mantua, bringing more retail activity to the small town.
“I think with Covid, everybody wanted to get out and do something, but the big stores were scary,” Randy Ellis said. “They didn’t want to be around big crowds, so it was the perfect time [to come to Mantua]. You could do your shopping here. There weren’t a whole lot of people, but you could get out, you could talk to people.”
Soon after the modern-looking coffee shop opened, all other businesses wanted to keep up, said Tubalkain.
And every time a new business opened, everybody’s business improved, said Ann Ellis.
Since the pandemic began, nine new businesses have opened, including Kira’s Sweet Bakes, Beacon Hues Glass and Lu Lu Tru. In the next couple of months, three more businesses are expected to follow suit, including a pottery shop and vintage clothing store. Most recently, a bulk foods store, Next Door General Store and Bulk Food, opened in March with a grand opening this month.
“It’s the right place to take a chance,” Randy Ellis said. “The people are very supportive. They appreciate what you bring to their community … Once you open a business there, you’re part of the community.”
Randy Ellis said the town’s revitalization is almost feeding on itself, with each business bringing more activity to the area.
“I think there’s a real energy about it,” Randy Ellis said. “These aren’t people that … are trying to get rich. These are people who have a service, want to provide a service and want to be a part of a community. They opened their business here because they saw a need for it.”
Ann Ellis opened her business in Mantua in 2020.
Owner of Bibury & Co., she decided to turn her Etsy shop into a brick-and-mortar when her youngest son went off to college and she had more time to do her own thing.
“What Mantua has, and what a lot of other places don’t have, is a very walkable downtown with the old-fashioned storefronts and the variety of businesses,” Ann Ellis said.
Opening her store was affordable in Mantua and felt feasible.
Her shop sells cards, other vendors’ items, locally made merchandise and environmentally friendly products.
Ann Ellis said many of the new businesses coming in are women-owned.
“There’s a bit of camaraderie there, where we’re all working together,” she said. “If you see other people doing something, you think, ‘I can do that too … She did, I can do it.’”
Small town advantages
Being a small town has its advantages, as Tubalkain said he enjoys knowing the person behind the counter when he walks into a store.
Randy Ellis said the bulk food store owner has a notepad on her counter, so customers can tell her what they’d like to find at the store, and she’ll try to get it for them. When he goes into Jake’s Market, they already have his preferred coffee on the counter because they saw him walking up.
“Their customers are their neighbors and they remember that,” Randy Ellis said.
Tubalkain said the successful businesses are the ones that participate in the community. Crooked River Flowers does classes and runs workshops all the time. He said people have gotten to know the owner, like him and want to support him.
The business owners are very committed to what they’re doing and are in it for the long haul, Randy Ellis said.
Future of the village
Randy Ellis said there is very little retail space right now, which is a good problem to have.
The village boasts the meeting point of various trails, easy access to highways without congestion, horseback riding, fruit picking, fishing, hunting and biking.
All of this, combined with the uptick in retail activity, might predict a bright and revitalized future for Mantua.
Tubalkain said he hopes to encourage more people to become homeowners in Mantua. Currently, close to half the houses in the village are rental property.
“It’s a quiet, friendly community,” Tubalkain said. “I think that’s probably the most important thing: to encourage that community spirit to keep going.”
