Yesterday morning during a press conference held at Clifton's Cafeteria (648 S. Broadway), Robert Clinton, whose family opened the restaurant in 1935, announced that after more than 70 years as a family business it has been sold to Andrew Meieran , who is best known in Downtown for opening The Edison, a bar and nightclub in the Higgins Building. Meireran has plans to restore the restaurant to it's original conditional, upgrade the infrastructure and other building systems, and reactivate the bakery. The most exciting part is that Meieran has said he would like to partner with the Midnight Mission to do job training and placement. He would like to create 100 jobs within the building while continuing to employ the 65 that currently work there.
I am personally excited about this change. Meieran had said that he is hoping that Clifton's can get people going back to Broadway for their after dark entertainment. I would love to see that. What is exciting to me is that Clifton's will not be going away, it is such a part of our Downtown history and for a while it looked as though the Bringing Back Broadway Initiative was going to drive them out of business, but now they will be leading it. I can't wait to see how it changes and I sincerely hope Meieran can create 100 jobs, we need them!
