Business Cycle: Starbucks coming to downtown Roanoke; Athens Corner Grill and CoreLife close

In addition, plans were filed at the Roanoke municipal building to construct a Starbucks within or adjacent to the northwest corner of One Ten Franklin, the former Norfolk Southern office tower in Roanoke. The location is south of the City Market near the fountain.

The building that has housed Athens Corner Grill in Roanoke is for lease and “a new operator will able to hit the ground running,” according to a real estate listing.

For $4,500 monthly, the address comes with a “fully equipped” kitchen and furnished dining room, the ad from Poe & Cronk said. It does not mention what happened to shut down the popular Greek restaurant that brothers Dimos and Stanley Tripodianos opened eight years ago, nor does the restaurant’s website or Facebook page.

The story began when the brothers, the children of Greek immigrants who became lawyers in New York, developed a fondness for Roanoke while visiting family members here. They followed a dream to become restaurateurs like their grandfather was in New York, rented a former medical building on South Jefferson Street, spent a year on improvements and opened Athens Corner Grill on Nov. 30, 2015, according a Roanoker article.

Roanoke’s CoreLife Eatery is marked “closed” on the website of the New York company that operates the restaurant chain as another area eatery turns out the lights.

George Grammenopoulos opened the restaurant in early 2020 in the Earth Fare shopping center on Franklin Road.

An online auction house last week offered the store’s equipment for sale. By all appearances, everything goes including the health-oriented restaurant’s Robot Coupe juicer, which goes for more than $1,000 new but drew a bid of $352 an hour before the auction began Wednesday morning.