CLEVELAND — Vendors at the West Side market have been sounding the alarm for years, asking Cleveland city leaders to keep the historic landmark a part of the city’s future. Now, Mayor Justin Bibb’s administration has released a master plan that would keep his campaign promise of updating and renovating the aging, at times unusable, market infrastructure, but will the proposal make it out of the ‘plan’ stage? Only time will tell.
Don Whitaker of DW Whitaker Meats has seen a lot of faces change over the last three decades. He’s been a vendor at the market; one thing has remained consistent: vendors asking for the city’s help, and finally the winds of change are blowing in the century-old space.
“Nineteen ninety-nine was about the last real, somewhat, restoration in here. For years we’ve tried to deal professionally with the last administration and got nowhere,” he said. “We finally have a plan. Before, we had a plan to have a plan; that was the Jackson administration’s plan.”
In February, the Bibb administration began the process to move the city-owned and managed market to still being city-owned but managed by a nonprofit called Cleveland Public Market Corporation.
Now, Jessica Trivisonno, Bibb’s senior strategist for the market, just released the master plan she and other stakeholders have been working on for the past year: how to update the aging infrastructure and bring the Cleveland staple into the 21st Century.
It starts from the bottom up, she said. The first order of business is to renovate the basement.
“The basement was designed in 1902. The building was finished in 1912. It’s been gradually tweaked over the years but it isn’t serving the modern needs of merchants and food-base businesses,” she said. “We need to make a ton of changes into the basement so it’s all new coolers, new elevators, two commercial kitchens.”
The plan proposes the produce vendors move to the East Arcade area, which will have plumbing, heating and air conditioning. In the North Arcade, Trivisonno said they’re planning on turning that into a food hall with restaurants, bars and public seating.
The mezzanine, which overlooks the market hall, will become public seating, event space, and a place for cooking classes.
“We hear from customers all the time that they want to be able to eat here. They want to sit here. This is a public market, which makes it more than a place to shop,” she said.
But, of course, these changes come with a cost.
“We are hoping that we can see these changes gradually come online in the next couple of years. It’s hard to give a timeline because it depends on when the funding becomes available,” said Trivisonno.
Mayor Bibb is planning to propose the idea to the city council to use American Rescue Plan Act to fund the $15 million needed to overhaul the basement.
Cleveland City Council President Blaine Griffin said he has reservations about using $15 million of ARPA funds to renovate the basement.
“I believe that we need to redirect some of that money that we are looking at committing to other pressing needs that we have throughout the city, from Kamm’s Corner to Collinwood to the Lakefront to Lee/Harvard and everything in between. We want to make sure that we have an equitable strategy to make sure we put these ARPA dollars to the greatest need, which is what their purpose is,” said Griffin.
He said he isn’t alone.
“A lot of other councilmembers have shared with me that they have concerns about that amount because we have pressing needs. There’s not a day that doesn’t go by that we don’t have somebody that’s dealing with infant mortality, that we don’t have somebody that’s dealing with lead exposure, that we don’t have young people that are being affected by gun violence,” said Griffin.
Whitaker said councilmembers know how important the market is and what it needs.
“We hit this roadblock out of nowhere with Council President Griffin lobbying council to vote against it. It’s a slap in our face, you know? We thought we were going in the right direction,” he said. “They all come here to campaign because they know the value of it.”
Mayor Bibb will be proposing the ARPA fund allocation to the city council on April 24. Griffin said he is open and looking forward to discussions with other council members.
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