The street level view on the corner of East 9^th and Walnut Avenue has bloomed in a way few might have predicted not so long ago. In 2009, the former East Ohio Building at 1717 East 9^th Street was vacant. Now, 223 apartments populate the 21 floors and a gorgeous new home furniture and décor retail venture, Metro Home, occupies the space where Clevelanders used to go to pay their utility bills.

"I'd flip the lights on and there would be seven or eight different people just peering in the windows," recalls store manager Robb Ernsberger of the store's soft opening in late July. "We let them in when there wasn't price tags on this stuff just to let people get acclimated to us."

No wonder that. Metro offers up retail eye candy the likes of which downtown hasn't seen since the heyday of the department store era, when window dressing was an art form and the Home departments at May's or Halle's or Higbee's housed divans and love seats worthy of the stately mansions in Ambler Heights or on Edgewater Drive.

Metro clinched the lease deal earlier this year. The City of Cleveland did minor build-out work in order to accommodate the spacious 4,500-square-foot store. Now the space is teeming with color and forward thinking pieces designed with the new downtown apartment dweller in mind, although Ernsberger reports that plenty of suburbanites and business owners peruse the merchandise as well.

The eclectic stock includes seating options such as the funky Flirt Sofa ($2,199) and EQ3 Tub Chair ($699) as well as quirky kitchen items. Try Stonewall’s Maple Bacon Onion Jam (about $8), or THAT! heated butter spreader (about $20), which uses the heat of your hand to ease the pesky task of making chilled butter submit to a slice of toast.

"It basically makes spreading butter ridiculously easy," says Ernsberger. "The thing can cut an ice cube in half."

Alternative cutting devices notwithstanding, Ernsberger notes that the new venture bodes well for downtown, much in the way Heinen's Grocery Store and the forthcoming Geiger's clothing and sporting goods shop are changing the area's landscape in both a literal and symbolic sense.

"It goes to show that another type of retail location can come down here and have an impact," says Ernsberger of Metro's new location, adding that downtown retail success is no longer just for the restaurant entrepreneur.

Metro owner Michael Rogoff started in the business in 1971 selling waterbeds in Cleveland Heights. While stores have opened and closed over the years, he's been selling homewares continually since then with at least one or two stores open at any given time. Currently, he's got the downtown Metro and one at 7835 Mentor Avenue in Mentor, which opened about three years ago. Rogoff also operates Sleep Source, a furniture and mattress warehouse at 5100 Pearl Road in Cleveland.

As for the latest venture, Ernsberger concedes that during the first month, the floor saw more lookers than buyers, but that's changing.

"We are definitely trending upwards," he says. "We are definitely starting to heat up."