The market is being revived after it was closed about a decade ago, and during the interim, no other grocery stores had opened up.
The new $3.5 million renovation project will reopen the market at East 105th Street and St. Clair Avenue, and will also include a 2,000 sq. ft. medical clinic onsite.
The previous East Side Market closed in 2007. The city approved plans for the market last September, and Northeast Ohio Neighborhood Health Services leased the old building to renovate the old location.
“We realize in order for our residents to make healthy choices they have to have healthy options available to us,” Karen Butler of Northeast Ohio Neighborhood Health Services told Channel 5.
The grocery store is expected to open later this year and create nearly 100 new jobs.
This article appears in May 4-10, 2016.
It has been four difficult years to fight through a disinterested Cleveland City Hall that did all it could to ignore and derail the New Eastside Market project. When I started the effort in 2013 to bring back to Glenville, and other nearby neighborhoods, a full service grocery store, I was disappointed with the lack of enthusiasm from city leaders that was different than how they react to downtown projects.
With the involvement of Councilmen Kevin Conwell and Mike Polensek, beginning in 2014, we united to get the project funded by the state government and private financing.
Why is it so hard to do development in neighborhoods not located downtown? It is unfair and misguided to have double standards in the use of our public investment funds.
Congratulations to NEON, and its team, who kept the faith while working with us as we moved the project through City Hall. It is because of this local public-private partnership that the New Eastside Market development has begun and continues on schedule for a fall opening. — Jeff Johnson, Councilman