CLEVELAND — Don Whitaker has spent more than 40 years at the West Side Market, starting as a teenage assistant and building a career – and a name for himself – as a butcher.
For decades, he’s been growing a business in a building that seems frozen in time.
So on Monday, he was thrilled to see caution tape outside and hear the echoing sound of drills.
Construction is getting started on a roughly $70 million makeover, the largest such project in the market’s 113-year history. Public officials and private supporters gathered for a groundbreaking, dipping shovels into dirt just inside the L-shaped produce arcade.
“It’s a little touching,” said Whitaker, who leads the market’s tenant association. “My board, and all the vendors, we’ve been trying to get change going for years. And it was just roadblock after roadblock. So to see it come, it’s pretty special.”
He wants shoppers to know one thing from the start.
“It’s gonna remain open during all this,” he said of Cleveland’s iconic grocery store. “There might be inconveniences. You might have to go to one door that you’re not used to. But we’ll adjust.”
The renovations could take three years to pull off – if the nonprofit behind the project can raise the final $18 million it needs to seamlessly roll from one phase of construction to the next.
That nonprofit, the Cleveland Public Market Corporation, took control of the city-owned property last year, making it much easier to get buy-in – and money – for upgrades.
The project builds on decades of planning, including a report crafted in the run-up to the market’s 2012 centennial and a more recent master plan. But it took a new administration at City Hall, a shift in approach and a lot of collaboration to make change possible.
“This is a project of such complexity and size that it can only happen when it has broad-based community support,” said David Abbott, the president of the Cleveland Public Market Corporation’s board and the former president of the George Gund Foundation.
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For Amanda Dempsey, Monday’s groundbreaking was a pinch-me moment.
She put together the centennial report in 2011, when she worked for neighborhood group Ohio City Inc. She later worked for the city as the market’s on-site manager from 2013 to 2014.
And she never gave up on the vision of bringing the landmark into the 21st century, preserving what’s special while making critical upgrades and finding new revenue streams.
“The market is so unique,” she said. “It’s one of the last truly public markets that still has traditional grocery vendors. … Obviously the building is iconic, but it’s really about the people, the customer relationships with the vendors. And it’s stood the test of time. There’s so many people that have stayed committed to the market over 100 years.”
She’s excited about the changes that shoppers will see, starting with a consolidated produce arcade that could open late this year. But she’s even more enthusiastic about the behind-the-scenes work: An overhaul of the basement and basic building systems.
“The stuff that the public sees is going to be beautiful, and there’s going to be so many community members that are gonna be able to take advantage of it,” she said. “And that’s great, but we need that core to be improved first.”
Rosemary Mudry, the executive director of the Cleveland Public Market Corporation, walked News 5 through the buildings Monday. The nonprofit has raised just over $50 million so far – a mix of public, private and philanthropic money.
That will cover the first phase of construction, starting with the revamped produce arcade. The eastern, shorter wing of the arcade is empty now. The vendors recently moved into other stands.
A rendering shows new floors and stands there. The historic curved ceiling and brick pillars will be preserved.
Once the new produce hall opens, the longer, northern wing of the arcade will close. It will be used for staging and swing space for vendors while construction workers move to the basement, which is filled with antiquated walk-in coolers.
The basement will be gutted, Mudry said. Plans for the space show new dedicated coolers for meat, poultry, fish and produce. One area will become a commercial kitchen, with ovens and other basic equipment that the market doesn’t have now.
“Folks will be able to rent it, similar to other shared kitchens, by the hour or by the afternoon or something," Mudry said, "and that will allow folks to do even more production on site. … We believe it’ll really help us diversify our tenant base and really open it up to a broader range of entrepreneurs, if we kind of reduce that barrier to entry."
The project also involves installing modern heating and cooling systems throughout both buildings. That will make the space more comfortable for shoppers and vendors, and prevent refrigerated display cases from having to work overtime to compensate, and failing at times, on extremely hot days.
Eventually, the longer, northern arm of the produce arcade will reopen as a hub for prepared foods.
Mudry said the space will feature two bars and a dozen or so merchants, along with plenty of tables and chairs. The arcade will be linked to the main market hall by two enclosed walkways, surrounded by a revamped courtyard with more seating.
“There’s 250 employees in the building, and they have nowhere to sit and eat their lunch right now,” she said. “People are like, scarfing it in their stands. Having public seating is great for customers, but it’s also good for the people who are just here all of the time.”
The north arcade is part of the second phase of construction, along with a planned event space and teaching kitchen in former locker rooms on the market hall’s second floor.
“Some of the sexiest spaces are the spaces that we still need to fundraise for,” Mudry said.
Whitaker remembers seeing early sketches for some of those projects, including the event space, in the 1990s. He knows there’s more work to do, more money to raise.
But with construction starting, and a nonprofit manager who managed to pull together $50 million in a single year, he can finally taste the future.
“People are apprehensive – ‘Is it really gonna happen?’" he said. “But the vendors are positive. It is happening. Because you can see construction trailers. There’s hard hats walking through the building everywhere now.”
