The Cleveland neighborhood around the West Side Market is being repositioned as the Market District, an eclectic blend of stores, restaurants and food-related businesses and activities.
View full sizeThe West Side Market, which celebrates its centennial in 2012, is the centerpiece of an effort to develop and brand part of Cleveland's Ohio City neighborhood as the Market District, an eclectic mix of stores, restaurants and food-related businesses and activities. A shopper scans the Christopher Bakery stall earlier this year. CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Planners and advocates in Cleveland's Ohio City neighborhood want to season the melting pot around the West Side Market with more specialty food stores, independent businesses and international flavor.
The historic market, which attracts more than a million visitors each year, will mark its centennial in late 2012. As the city prepares for a party, community groups and developers are hatching plans to build up and brand the neighborhood as the Market District -- an eclectic blend of shops, restaurants and activity at the heart of the region's local food economy.
The Ohio City Near West Development Corp. hopes to create a seamless transition between the West Side Market and the surrounding streets, which still are speckled with vacant and little-used properties. During the next several years, the community development group hopes to promote the Market District brand, to put cleaning crews and safety forces on the streets, to install signs to guide pedestrians and drivers and to recruit more stores and other businesses.
The city of Cleveland has budgeted $1.5 million to remake Market Square Park, a small public space across from the market. The Ohio City Near West group and several partners are launching a $75,000 transportation-planning study that will pinpoint ways to make the neighborhood easier to navigate. And Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson recently formed a commission to identify potential physical and operational improvements for the market and to plan for the centennial.
"I always say to people that if Cleveland were Rome, the West Side Market would be the Vatican," said Councilman Joe Cimperman, a member of the centennial commission. "It's the place where people come together."
Proximity to the market helped developer MRN Ltd. attract a new retail tenant, Penzeys Spices, to the old United Bank Building at West 25th Street and Lorain Avenue. The developer, known for turning downtown Cleveland's East Fourth Street into an entertainment and restaurant district, has spent $12.5 million so far on a $20 million project called Marketplace. In addition to the nine-story office and bank building, the redevelopment includes several retail spaces and parking lots around West 25th.
MRN partner Ari Maron said tenants have filled 90 percent of the office space in the former bank building, a historic structure with an ornate lobby and a massive underground vault. In February, the Alcohol, Drug Addiction and Mental Health Services Board of Cuyahoga County moved onto the sixth, seventh and eighth floors.
Now Penzeys, a mail-order and storefront spice-seller based in Wisconsin, has signed a lease on 2,500 square feet at the front of the former bank lobby. The retailer, which has a store at Eton Chagrin Boulevard in Woodmere, could open its West Side location within four to six months, said founder and chief executive officer Bill Penzey.
"I just love that whole West Side Market area," Penzey said. "The people who shop there, they're just real people who really cook, and that's so what we're all about. We've been looking up and down the couple of blocks outside of the market for years."
Holes in the neighborhood gradually are filling in. Ohio City Burrito, the Dragonfly Lounge, Horizontal Books and basement bar Speakeasy have opened since early 2009. Great Lakes Brewing Co., ABC Tavern, Le Petit Triangle Cafe, Market Avenue Wine Bar and Light Bistro have made improvements or are expanding. And the Market Garden Brewery, a $2.1 million brewpub and beer garden, is under construction next to the West Side Market.
Yashar Yildirim, one of the owners of Anatolia Cafe in Cleveland Heights, recently signed a lease to open a Turkish restaurant called Alaturka in a former hookah bar space at 1917 W. 25th St.
"You have a sense of community, like Cleveland Heights, like Lakewood," Yildirim said. "People like ethnic food and individual restaurants. There's no chains around."
Ohio City Near West aims to build the Market District on those local and international legs. The community development organization is studying prospects for bringing an international hostel or boutique hotel to the neighborhood. And the group wants to see an urban farm develop at West 24th Street and Bridge Avenue, on 6 acres now owned by the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority.
"We're looking at this as the physical capital of the regional, local food system," said Eric Wobser, executive director of Ohio City Near West. "We want to position Ohio City as the neighborhood that feeds the region."