Success at the corner of Abbott Road and E. Grand River Avenue has eluded business owners again.

Big Ten Delicatessen, 101 E. Grand River Ave., closed this week in response to poor sales after about seven months of business.

And it wouldn’t be the first time a business on the corner has been overlooked by East Lansing residents.

The corner has hosted three restaurants including Big Ten Delicatessen in the past five years.

“I’ve never understood why when you have one business that fails and somebody else goes in with the same type of business,” said Jim van Ravensway, East Lansing director of planning and community development. “It’s like, ‘What were they thinking?’”

Despite the corner’s poor performance, Ravensway said the corner is a prime location.

The corner boasts proximity to The Landshark, 101 E. Grand River Ave., Rick’s American Cafe, 224 Abbott Road, and P.T. O’Malley’s, 210 Abbott Road.

“It’s a premier corner,” Ravensway said. “All the pedestrian traffic, it has such high visibility, but I guess that the people who have tried to make a go at it is they’re competing with a rather significant food service.”

Such competition in East Lansing including Sidestreet Deli of East Lansing, 605 E. Grand River Ave.

Sidestreet Deli manager Vinnie Bartalone said competition may have been a factor, but timing also was an issue.

Bartalone said additionally, as the business was starting, people were trying to save money.

“I think it’s the economy,” he said. “There’s so many food places everyone’s just killing each other.”

Big Ten may have hung around if the economy had been better but it didn’t have an established customer base, unlike Sidestreet Deli, Bartalone said.

“(We got through) just through regular customers,” he said. “A lot of professors and businesses around here that have been using Sidestreet.”

Despite the history of the corner, coming up with a new owner to take it’s place shouldn’t be difficult, said Howard Ballein, owner of Student Book Store, 421 E. Grand River Ave., and part-owner of the property.

Ballein said people have already come forward to take the deli’s place but he couldn’t say when or what will take its place.

“We prefer the local people, we’d like to get a family-owned business in there,” he said.

But he’s willing to make an exception.

“I’d like to put a Krispy Kreme in there.”