CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Fourteen months after opening a clothing store on East Fourth Street, two local entrepreneurs have decided to shut the doors at Dredgers Union, their attempt to revive downtown Cleveland's retail scene.

The apparel and housewares store will announce today that it plans to sell off merchandise and close.

An experiment from the start, Dredgers Union was a passion project for boutique owner Danielle DeBoe and fashion designer Sean Bilovecky. With support from a community lender and their landlord, the Maron family, the pair decided to test the market for shopping on a street best known for restaurants and entertainment.

Despite rave reviews from tourists and some national attention, the 4,500-square-foot store did not see enough pedestrian traffic or local shoppers to survive. Unpredictable weather and the cutthroat nature of the apparel business played a role. But it also appears that East Fourth, and much of downtown Cleveland, isn't ready for traditional retail. Experts say the city, with just over 10,000 downtown residents, must keep boosting population to give retailers a shot at success.

"It's a sad state of affairs," said Robert Antall, a longtime retail consultant and managing partner at Consumer Centric Consulting in Shaker Heights. "You really need a critical mass of downtown residents to support retail in downtown Cleveland. You can't depend on the suburbanites and the tourists. ... My point of view on this is you could do everything very well and still not succeed, because you've got a lot going against you. It's not only downtown Cleveland. You're also competing against national chains."

With drug stores, a local grocer in the Warehouse District, and service businesses like dry cleaners and shoe-repair shops, downtown Cleveland isn't devoid of retail.

Restaurants, including well-known brands like Potbelly Sandwich Shops, are filling long-empty spaces.

Developer Ari Maron said ground-floor tenants along East Fourth, as a whole, are reporting double-digit sales gains when compared with last year. Just this week, Red Restaurant Group of Beachwood revealed plans to open a Red the Steakhouse on Prospect Avenue, east of East Fourth.

"We're moving in the right direction," said Richard Sheehan, a retail broker with Grubb & Ellis in downtown Cleveland. "We're getting there."

But traditional shopping -- particularly apparel -- is a harder sell. And once-vibrant retail streets and indoor arcades are lined with vacant storefronts.

When they opened Dredgers Union in June 2011, DeBoe and Bilovecky hoped to start a wave of retail redevelopment. Their hook: Private-label men's and women's clothing, designed in Cleveland and sewn in America. The store brought new clothing brands to Northeast Ohio and stocked bedding, kitchen items, soaps and knick-knacks.

Their whirlwind first summer beat projections, helped along by actors and movie crews working and staying downtown. But fall clothing sales suffered amid unpredictable, warm weather. Film traffic, driven by a state tax-credit program, died down. Tourism fell off during the winter. And many local consumers either weren't willing to come downtown to shop or stayed away because of concerns about finding -- and paying for -- parking.

Shutting Dredgers Union "feels bad on an emotional side, because this is kind of like a baby," said DeBoe, who is 35 and also owns the Room Service boutique in Cleveland's Ohio City neighborhood. "We created this thing, and we're really passionate about it. But at the end of the day, it's really not that shocking, considering that from the beginning we knew this was a strong possibility."

Dredgers Union, at 2043 E. 4th St., received its last merchandise shipment two weeks ago. The closing sale, starting at 50 percent off, will begin this morning.

Downtown developers and boosters believe certain types of retail can work in the center city. CLE Clothing, which sells Cleveland-themed t-shirts, tote bags, hats and artwork, has been busy since it opened in late November at the southwest corner of East Fourth and Euclid Avenue. But selling t-shirts for $24 to $30, out of high-profile space next to the Positively Cleveland downtown visitors' center, is quite different than launching a full-scale apparel business in a former department store.

"We always get tourists coming in, and they ask us where the shopping is downtown," said Mike Kubinski, a CLE Clothing co-founder. "I say, 'Hi, there's just us. And the Dredgers Union.' I would like to see more retail downtown. Whether it's chain or boutique, I think it can be successful if it's in the right area."

Maron, whose family turned East Fourth into a dining and residential district, believes demand for retail will grow as more people move downtown. Census data shows that the downtown population grew by 74 percent from 2000 to 2010. But it's still 10,000 to 15,000 people short of the demographics many national retailers want to see.

Downtown apartment occupancy hit a record 97 percent during the second quarter. Developers are planning or building nearly 900 apartments between Public Square and Cleveland State University -- many of them in existing buildings that once housed offices. Those projects would mark a 21.5 percent increase in supply and could house an estimated 1,350 residents.

"We know that the trend for a long time in retail is that people tend to shop where they live," said Joe Marinucci, chief executive officer of the Downtown Cleveland Alliance, which represents property owners. "We think we've made good progress on the housing front. Demand has been very solid, and that demand does not seem to be diminishing. As we grow the residential market, we also feel very strongly that we'll grow the retail base because of it."

The alliance keeps working with TerreMark Partners of Georgia on retail development strategies for downtown. A plan TerreMark floated several years ago, just as the U.S. economy crumbled, called for luring upscale outlet stores to Euclid Avenue and targeting home goods businesses, restaurants and local retailers for other parts of the center city.

Maron hopes to fill the Dredgers Union space with an unidentified food-and-beverage tenant. Cleveland Development Advisors, a local nonprofit that put private money into the Dredgers Union project, will maintain its investment in the property.

The Dredgers Union brand will disappear. Bilovecky, a 36-year-old Northeast Ohio native, is looking at fashion-design jobs in other cities. He still believes in the concept of domestically produced, private-label clothing sold at prices comparable to those of Banana Republic or J. Crew. But he thinks 2011 was the wrong time, and downtown Cleveland the wrong place, to test that idea.

"Clevelanders, there are obstacles in their brains to shopping downtown," he said. "We all firmly believe that if you were to take Dredgers and put it in Legacy Village or Crocker Park, it would do really well. But we don't have the money to do that."

DeBoe plans to focus on her Room Service store, which gets steady foot traffic from the Ohio City and Tremont neighborhoods. Inspired by planning her own wedding -- set for Sept. 8 -- she aims to launch a wedding-planning business in January. But she hasn't written off downtown.

"I'm not done with Cleveland retail," she said. "I have a lot of energy to give. ... I think it's still just as necessary as it was a year and a half ago. It's just that, sometimes, those that are at the front end are the ones that are the casualties. The ones that pay the price while opening up things for other people."

On Twitter: @mjarboe