Cordelia Stubblefield

Miami University Journalism Student

In the last 3 years, several businesses have closed in Oxford.

Every August, students flock back to school, and subsequently, uptown Oxford. There’s usually at least one thing that’s changed. One restaurant, cafe or store that used to exist and is now simply gone.

According to the Hamilton Journal-News, Oxford saw 19 businesses open and 14 either move, change owners or close outright in 2012.

Glenn Ellerbe, the chair of the Oxford Chamber of Commerce can attest that more than a decade later, the pattern is still there. The chamber sees about 20 to 25 businesses join and 5 to 6 leave the chamber and go out of business in the span of a year.

Ellerbe says many of the businesses in the Oxford community see Oxford as a “nine-month economy.” According to the City of Oxford, roughly 47% of the town’s population consists of people between the ages of 20–24. When students leave for break, it slashes the total population in a very noticeable way.

Ellerbe says this is especially detrimental to businesses that appeal to the college demographic. These businesses usually end up closing shop or reducing hours during long breaks.

According to Ellerbe, even businesses like Dunkin’ Donuts have expressed concern to the chamber regarding student drop off over the winter and summer breaks. Businesses fear losing the college consumer base.

Businesses and the chamber alike have tried to find ways to counteract this. Miami students who leave for the summer might not know this, but Oxford hosts events called “Red Brick Fridays” during the long breaks to help encourage locals to come out and support businesses.

This is an example of what Ellerbe calls “creative placemaking.” It encourages locals to support their economy while building community. With a little bit of live music, consumers can participate in the arts while exploring what local restaurants and businesses have to offer.

Many places have some kind of creative placemaking in the form of festivals or other seasonal tourism. However, it isn’t a magical cure-all for small businesses. Stores and restaurants in Oxford run into issues even with seasonal tourism.

According to Ellerbe, placemaking can’t help businesses if they don’t choose their focus and demographics wisely.

“[The] businesses, typically, I don’t see them joining the chamber but I see struggling are extremely niche businesses, ethnic foods being one of those.”

Businesses that fail to cater to as big an audience as possible won’t see as much success in a town like Oxford. According to Ellerbe, regardless of how diverse Oxford appears, it’s ultimately a small Ohio town. For a brief moment in 2024, Oxford was home to one of the country’s only Uyghur restaurants. The restaurant would close towards the end of 2025, and according to Ellerbe, it’s because people want things they understand.

For example, chicken tenders.

OxVegas Chicken has quickly become a favorite for college students. This success has allowed the store’s owners, Jackson Trester and Tyler Storer, to open other business ventures.

Casey Rensel is the Chief Operating Officer for the owners’ capital group. He claims their initial success was simple.

“Oxford had a need for late night, quick food, and chicken happens to be one of the best ways to do that.”

Rensel still remembers interviewing with the owners when there was gravel on the floor, the building still under construction. OxVegas has only grown in the two years since. He says they’ve done research through data gathering and surveys to know what Miami students want. Now, according to Rensel, they employ almost 50 workers.

Because OxVegas claims to be a student first business (meaning they primarily employ students, according to Rensel), the summer drop off doesn’t just take their consumer base. It also takes their work force.

It’s more complicated to operate a business when employees leave for home in the middle of the calendar year. This can cause stress for an owner or manager who has to take on more work, whether it be finding labor to cover shifts or filling in themselves.

For example, in a Miami Student article, former business owner Elizabeth Siegel says she closed her business Uptown Blends because it took her away from her family.

After debating her options on whether to close shop, something happened that made that choice a bit easier. If she wanted to continue her business, she had to commit to a three year lease with an increased fee on her rent.

“Even though we had a killer semester last semester, like I doubled in sales and everything, I knew that I would need another level of money,” Siegel says in the article.

Uptown Blends closed in January 2025 after Siegel had to make a decision plenty of other business owners find themselves making.

Rental properties in Oxford come at a high demand. One woman, Shana Rosenberg, recently moved locations in an attempt to receive a better monthly rent for her business.

Rosenberg established Thread Up Oxford in 2021 with a textile drive that brought in 2700 pounds of material. She rented a store front after that, Uptown Threads, and at first, moving locations seemed like a sign that things were changing for the better.

As a nonprofit organization, Rosenberg’s mission has always been to help clothe people who can’t afford the things they need. To do this, she operates a storefront selling donated textiles at a profit. To her, the goal is to make enough money to keep the lights on and to provide clothing to those in need for free.

“People expect that we’re just giving clothes away and I’m like, no, this runs our Karma Bucks program where we run a voucher program to get people in the shop,” she says. “That is the mission of Thread Up Oxford, is to provide to people that have already interacted with social service agencies and give their clients these Karma Bucks vouchers, okay?”

Rosenberg also has a large warehouse attached to the back of her store that she says is becoming too expensive to keep. This warehouse exists in a physical storefront directly next to her business that she also pays rent on. Essentially, Rosenberg rents out two properties for her business, but only one generates the income needed to keep them both.

Rosenberg’s view on her business has changed since making the move.

In the past, she would accept every donation that came through, now she’s learned to ask for specific items at a time. The warehouse is filled with bags of various clothing, blankets and bedding and shoes. It once seemed wise to hold on to so much material. Now, she’s frantically trying to move it all out of storage and into the back of her store.

Additionally, Rosenberg’s labor comes primarily from volunteer work, which becomes harder to find when students go home. That, coupled with a lack of consumers in the summer and winter, have put her in a difficult spot.

“We’re living month to month for real, as far as money goes,” she says.

Many business owners struggle with the financial responsibilities of renting a space, purchasing inventory and trying to make a profit.

Seth Cropenbaker is an Economic Development Specialist for the City of Oxford. He tries to make sure business owners like Rosenberg have proper tools and strategies for planning their businesses.

According to him, the major reason businesses fail has to do with a lack of planning.

“Unfortunately, a lot of entrepreneurs in our community start with identifying a perceived gap in the market,” he says. “That’s what drives them to open a business, maybe before they fully vet out a business plan.”

To a business owner, the college population drop is a financial concern. To Cropenbaker, it becomes much larger. He says that when college students become the highest consumer (which in Oxford, they are) everyone caters to that population over the people who live here full time.

For example, Cropenbaker claims that residential properties in Oxford quickly get turned into off-campus housing, taking housing opportunities from families that need them.

Because of this love of the college demographic, Cropenbaker looks towards Miami’s international student base as top-priority consumers. International students notably take fewer trips home than national students, meaning they spend more time (and money) on Oxford’s economy. However, enrollment rates for international students have dropped, largely due to stricter immigration policies.

Cropenbaker calls this loss of international students significant.

“That international student base represented almost a permanent resident base of about 4,ooo students.”

It’s possible that as international student enrollment declines, Oxford’s unique economy might experience some fall out. To counteract this and lighten Oxford’s dependency on college students, Cropenbaker says Oxford has to put more development into the people who already live here.

Oxford’s current economy centers around college aged consumers and laborers, which hurts older, more family-oriented residents. With time, Oxford can expand and make full time residents become more prioritized consumers. Maybe then local businesses won’t have to fear making ends meet in the summer.

What Oxford’s college town economy means for local businesses was originally published in Oxford Stories on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.