CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Months from opening, the Uptown project in University Circle is running out of retail room.

A grocery store, local restaurants and national chains have inked deals for 95 percent of the ground-floor space in two apartment buildings flanking Euclid Avenue.

Filling a much-mentioned void in the neighborhood, Constantino's Market will open a store on East 115th Street.

The independent grocer will be joined by a Barnes & Noble college bookstore and a wireless store on Euclid. Across the street, chefs Jonathon Sawyer and Scott Kim have plans for new restaurants. Their eateries will bookend a Chipotle, a Jimmy John's and a Panera Bread - quick-service chains catering to college students and lunchtime crowds.

The $44.5 million first phase of Uptown, set to open in the spring, includes 102 apartments over 56,000 square feet of retail. The two buildings form the spine of a resurgent neighborhood, with a growing array of places to learn, live, work and play.

Developer MRN Ltd. broke ground for Uptown in mid-2010, after nursing the project through the recession with help from public and private lenders.

MRN hasn't started leasing apartments and still won't disclose rental rates. But the developer and Case Western Reserve University, a partner in the project, have filled most of the retail space.

And the momentum is spreading to CWRU's nearby Triangle towers, where tenants including ABC the Tavern - an Ohio City bar plotting its second location - have signed leases.

The retail mix has the local marks of other MRN projects, including East Fourth Street and the Marketplace district in Ohio City. But the developer also sought out national names.

"It's a different market than downtown and East Fourth Street," said Ari Maron, a partner in MRN. "Each neighborhood in the city should have a different character."

Large grocers have been skittish about Cleveland stores and reluctant to cut their parking needs to suit an urban site.

Stephen Campbell and John Wheeler of CWRU saw a better fit in Constantino's, which opened a Warehouse District store in 2005 and rounds out groceries with beer, wine, prepared foods and catering. The Uptown store will be 12,500 square feet, plus a mezzanine.

"We're not a grocery store that is going to appeal to the suburban shopper," said owner Costas Mavromichalis, whose son-in-law will run the University Circle store.

"But we do appeal to single people, small families and retired people who don't want to be spending a lot of time in a big supermarket or driving to a big supermarket."

Neighborhood group University Circle Inc. recently won a $659,706 federal grant for the Constantino's project. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which awarded the grant, considers the area to be a "food desert" - where affordable, healthy food options are scarce.

University Circle Inc. said the money will be used for a low-interest loan for the $3.1 million grocery project.

South of Euclid, a row of restaurants will form one side of a pedestrian alley lined with patios. One of CWRU's spruced-up Triangle towers will create the other side of the alley, leading west from East 115th.

Sawyer, the chef behind the Greenhouse Tavern and Noodlecat in downtown Cleveland, did not return a phone call Tuesday. Maron would not reveal anything about Sawyer's plans at Uptown.

Kim, chef-owner of SASA on Shaker Square, plans to open a Pan-Asian fusion restaurant called Accent in an egg-shaped space on East 115th.

"We're trying to capture all the employees after work, the happy hours," Kim said. "We're not going to be a five-star, upscale, chichi place. We're going to be very comfortable."