A sprawling slime attraction is about to take over the downtown Boston address that spent 15 years slinging burgers and rock memorabilia. Sloomoo Institute will open its new site at 22-24 Clinton Street on November 14, moving into the space long occupied by Hard Rock Cafe before that restaurant shut its doors in 2022.
From Mini Pop-Up to Full Institute
The Boston location follows a test run that Sloomoo clearly considered a success. According to Axios, the company's smaller MiniMoo outpost at Faneuil Hall Marketplace drew 65,000 visitors, and co-founder and co-CEO Sara Schiller said those guests wanted more than the scaled-down version could offer. MiniMoo visitors, the outlet reported, were asking for a full Sloomoo experience rather than the scaled-down experience they'd had at Faneuil Hall.
That appetite-testing strategy tracks with how Sloomoo entered the Boston market in the first place. The company first tested the local market in late 2025 by opening a 3,000-to-4,000-square-foot MiniMoo at Faneuil Hall Marketplace, according to Forbes, which noted the company ran a similar small-format experiment in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. Once the lease on Clinton Street was signed in January, per the same Axios report, Sloomoo committed to moving all of its hands-on activities there while keeping the Faneuil Hall location open as a retail-only store.
What's Inside the New Space
The Clinton Street venue will be Sloomoo's eighth full-scale institute, per Axios, and it's packed with attractions, some of which the company says aren't available anywhere else in its lineup. Guests can expect slime waterfalls, a basketball-style squishy hoops game, an ASMR installation, a whack-a-mole-style Boop a Poo station, and a Slimey Mirrors VR room built around a spaceship theme. Standard entry includes a custom slime that visitors design themselves at a DIY Slime Bar, which the company says offers more than 4 million possible color, texture, scent, and charm combinations, according to Sloomoo Institute. Tickets for the new Boston site start at $35.99, Axios reported.
Sloomoo's broader business has leaned heavily on exactly this kind of ticketed experience rather than merchandise sales. The company generated $28.9 million in revenue across its first four locations in 2023, with ticket sales accounting for roughly 85% of that total and monthly revenue reaching as high as $4.3 million in 2024, according to CNBC Make It
The Boston opening will bring the company's total to eight Sloomoo Institute locations, joining venues in New York, Atlanta, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and the D.C. area.
A Long Goodbye for Hard Rock Cafe
The space itself carries its own history in Boston's tourist corridor. Hard Rock Cafe permanently closed its Clinton Street location on June 26, 2022, after 15 years of operation, a closure tied to lease expiration that resulted in 44 employee layoffs, according to CBS News Boston. Before relocating to the Faneuil Hall-adjacent address in 2007, the restaurant had operated in Back Bay on Clarendon Street since June 1989, giving the Hard Rock brand a 33-year run in Boston overall, per Boston Restaurant Talk.
The building sits inside the Dock Square Garage, a 698-space structure that Brooklyn-based Fortis Property Group bought in September 2017 for $170 million, according to Real Estate Weekly. Fortis later secured city planning approvals in July 2019 for a 420,000-square-foot redevelopment of the garage that included up to 210 residential condominiums above the parking structure and repositioned ground-floor retail, a plan that drew pushback from preservation groups over its proximity to Faneuil Hall. Hoodline previously covered the garage's ownership history in the context of a separate Back Bay property sale.
Part of a Bigger Sensory-Play Push
Sloomoo Institute first opened in New York City in 2019. Forbes identifies Sara Schiller and Karen Robinovitz as the company's co-founders. Sloomoo's accessibility efforts include hiring differently abled staff, a focus Hoodline detailed in its coverage of the LA launch.
The Boston opening also fits a broader pattern of experiential attractions filling spaces once occupied by traditional retail and dining, a shift Hoodline has tracked at other shopping destinations, including the mix of immersive attractions reshaping King of Prussia Mall. For downtown Boston, the shift means a stretch of Faneuil Hall-area real estate that spent decades serving tourists burgers and classic rock memorabilia will soon be slinging custom slime instead.
