PALM CITY — Martin County Commissioner Ed Ciampi closed his ice cream and chocolate shop at the Publix shopping center on Martin Highway in May and anticipates reopening in late July at a new location in a strip mall on Mapp Road.

It was the second setback for Ciampi’s 3-year-old chain of “Sweet Sarah’s” ice cream and chocolate shops. Last year, Ciampi closed his shop in Port St. Lucie because of a lack of traffic at a shopping center near Veteran’s Memorial Park.

“We all have to adapt to the current economic conditions and I’m doing just that,” Ciampi said. “Three or four years ago, when I started this process, the economy was different. So now I’m making smart decisions to stay in business.”

In addition to cutting his overhead costs in half, the new, smaller location in the 2900 block of Mapp Road offers greater visibility from the street, which is crucial for a business that relies on walk-in business like an ice cream and chocolate shop, Ciampi said.

Although the property is owned by Michael DiTerlizzi, his predecessor representing District 5 on the County Commission, Ciampi and DiTerlizzi both said that’s just a matter of circumstances and there is no special deal.

“It has nothing to do with Mike DiTerlizzi,” Ciampi said about his shop’s new location. “It was one of the few vacant spots that I could find that has good (visibility). One of the problems I had in my original store; that shopping center — you couldn’t see it from the road.”

DiTerlizzi said it wouldn’t be fair to the other business in his strip mall if he gave Ciampi a break on the rent.

“I give Ed the same deal I give any one of my other tenants,” DiTerlizzi said. “He needed to downsize his store. I think it’s a good move for him. He’ll be the only ice cream parlor in Palm City.”

DiTerlizzi added, “I just can’t wait for him to open. My kids love ice cream.”

Ciampi said he is working to reopen Sweet Sarah’s on Mapp Road as soon as possible and open a new store in Port St. Lucie when the economy rebounds.

“We had traffic for the ice cream, but based on the economic conditions, the other products that we sell — chocolate, stuffed animals, birthday parties — those things started to slow down because people aren’t spending that kind of money,” Ciampi said.

“We were still scooping a lot of ice cream, but it was hard to pay the overhead,” Ciampi said. “There’s only a couple of things you can do in business. You can lower your payroll and then you can lower your overhead and so we were able to do that.”

By George Andreassi

Tags: business, commissioners, cuts, Economy, kids, mall, money, property, Publix, roads, Traffic

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 at 10:15 am and is filed under Economy, Palm City, Treasure Coast business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.