The now-defunct bar formerly known as The Mark will be transformed into a candy shop, Campus Candy, as indicated on a flyer posted on the shop’s door.
Instead of asking for IDs, the building that previously housed The Mark will prompt patrons to find their inner child.
Bringing bright-green tile floors, numerous television screens, free WiFi and 450 to 600 candy bins, the owners of Campus Candy — set to open at the start of the spring semester — hope their business will thrive despite downtown College Park’s reputation for rapid business turnover. Regional manager Jerremy Deckard said the staying power will come from becoming a hotspot for city residents and students alike.
“We like to provide a place for people to hang out and not necessarily be a bar,” Deckard said. “It’s a modern-day version of an old school candy shop. If a Starbucks, a Dylan’s Candy Bar and a Yogiberry all run into each other, that’s what you’d get. You’d get us.”
But some students are skeptical of a candy shop’s ability to survive in the city. With the closing of three city bars, senior economics major Erica Meyer said a candy shop isn’t exactly what students are craving.
“Students would rather have another bar, especially since now we only have two,” she said. “I just think it’s the wrong place for it. I don’t think college students want a candy bar.”
But Deckard called Campus Candy’s two other locations at Indiana University and the University of Wisconsin, which both opened this year, an “unbelievable success.”
“Customer volume itself has been very high in general, and quite honestly has blown our projections out of the water,” he wrote in an e-mail.
Founded by Mark Tarnofsky, a candy-bar-craving father who was moving his daughter into her dorm at Indiana University, Campus Candy is expanding its candy and frozen yogurt offerings to other college towns. College Park will be the third or fourth, depending on when the University of Arizona’s location opens.
But with downtown College Park’s history of short-lived restaurants — Living Well Café, Wata-Wing and Chicken Rico included in the casualties — and with Yogiberry housed in the same Route 1 strip, the new business needs a stable plan, which Deckard said Campus Candy has. The store will target the student population through social media outlets, he said, while also forging relationships with local residents by supporting community events and philanthropic causes.
“[We plan to] get involved in schools, get involved with Little Leagues — anything to help the community, support the community and let them know we’re interested in staying here a very, very long time,” Deckard said.
As for Yogiberry, Deckard said Campus Candy — which has what he called the “world’s largest topping bar,” as all candies can be used as toppings for yogurt — is not trying to compete.
“We are first and foremost a candy store. … We’re not here to come into town as a yogurt shop,” he said. “We’re not here to put people like that out of business; we’re here to do our own thing. If people like our yogurt better, then that’s that.”
Kai Umurzakoev, a manager for the Yogiberry chain, said their loyal customer base will keep Yogiberry — which has had a steady stream of customers since its opening in College Park last November — afloat.
“Of course it’s competition, but I think it doesn’t matter for us because our customers like our yogurt,” he said. “We’re not new, and a lot of customers love us.”
But Deckard said the shop’s copious candies — with unique combinations such as tequila-flavored suckers and chocolate-covered graham cracker “clodhoppers” — provide a lively atmosphere that will keep patrons coming.
“We get the ‘wow’ factor,” he said. “When people walk through the door, they get all of these candies people haven’t seen since they were kids.”
roubein at umdbk dot com
