CentroVilla25, Clark-Fulton's Long-Planned Latin Market, Breaks Ground

Prime stakeholders in CentroVilla25’s groundbreaking ceremony, including Council President Blaine Griffin, Ward 14 Councilwoman Jasmin Santana, Mayor Justin Bibb and Jenice Contreras. Credit: Mark Oprea

On March 13, 2013, more than 70 city officials and leaders convened at a conference at the Northeast Ohio Hispanic Center for Economic Development on West 25th to discuss the near future of Cleveland’s Clark-Fulton neighborhood. The discussion quickly wrapped itself around the growing hospital—MetroHealth—and its changing streetscape.

But not much about the residents and neighborhood around it.

“There was not mention, not one mention of our culture, not one mention of our leaders,” Juan Molina Crespo, executive director of the Hispanic Alliance, said at a press conference Friday. “Not one mention of anything in terms of the contribution that we had to community since 1957. And so I was like, ‘There’s something wrong here.'”

A decade later, in wide warehouse of the vacant H.G. Weber building a block down from the Northeast Ohio Hispanic Center for Economic Development, Crespo was overjoyed to help usher in a truly different conversation: the start of Clark-Fulton’s first true project to celebrate to its Latin residents.

Friday afternoon, two months after City Council topped off its $12 million funding goal with $1.5 million in ARPA dollars, every single major stakeholder in CentroVilla25’s design and fundraising helped commence its groundbreaking.

Such flair, tears and high elán at Friday’s ceremony was testament to a lengthy, often times rocky, fundraising process. One that, starting with this month’s groundbreaking, will will finish construction in 2024, comes to a head as CentrolVilla25 takes shape as a cultural hub.

“We don’t have a space that we could be proud of, that we could go for our food, that we could gather, that we could enjoy our culture,” Ward 14 Councilwoman Jasmin Santana told Scene. “And we’ve been here since the sixties.”

Credit: Northeast Ohio Hispanic Center For Economic Development

Santana, the majority whip of City Council, was undeniably a big part of why the Northeast Ohio Hispanic Center for Economic Development scored the $1.5 million to push CentroVilla25. She had been lobbying for the market since being elected Ward 14’s first Latina councilperson in 2019.

“I say it’s like my Moses project,” Santana added. “You know, we’re finally getting to the Promised Land. But it’s taken a lot of hard work, perseverance—and a family.”

Slated to finish its buildout in late 2024, CentroVilla25 is designed as both a cultural and economical focal point in 32,500 square feet of space. Its aim is to host local changemakers, like the offices of Metro West and CHN Housing Partners, to start, along with a Latino specialty grocer, a commercial kitchen and 20 micro-retail units for area small businesses.

“It’ll be our new focal point,” Selina Pagan, co-director of operations at the Young Latino Network, told Scene. “It’ll help us build social cohesion. At least more so than our makeshift spaces in the past.”

CentroVilla25 started as a sketch drawing by former Hispanic Alliance director Angél Guzman, who yearned to populate what he called La Villa Hispana, or the Northeast Ohio Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. City Hall never bought into it. Local leadership floundered. Guzman’s sketch resided in his office until his death, at 58, in 2008.

Jenice Contreras, who took on the CentroVilla25 project as in 2013, the year she was elected director of the Northeast Ohio Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, was celebrated Friday as one of the strongest prime movers in the center’s completion. Contreras, in her ten-minute speech, painted the project as a sort of pan-Latin epicenter, a celebratory homage to the Latin American places she pined to visit as a little girl.

NEOCHED’s director Jenice Contreras was celebrated Friday for her decade-long fight to actualize CentroVilla25, despite ten years of funding obstacles. Credit: Mark Oprea

“I remember sitting on the floor of my mom’s apartment, as a 14 year old,” she told the crowd, recalling growing up on West 30th and Clark Ave. “And I could see the roof of the building. I could literally see the building. And of all the places I would travel, none of them were on West 25th.”

She added, “So, to be able to have a dream realized right here, I didn’t need to go. It was right here. It was right in front of my face the whole time.”

Jose Feliciano, Sr., long a champion for Clark-Fulton and CentroVilla25’s capital co-chair, reminded the audience that the renderings that sat before them started as ideas “40 years in the making.”

Like Crespo, Feliciano, Sr., paid specific homage to both Guzman and Contreras, and reminded the crowd of how Guzman might be equally overjoyed to see the project realized.

Feliciano, Sr., quoted Henry the Fifth, speaking before a battle on Christmas Day, 1450. “Before the battle, he said, ‘They shall think themselves accursed if they were not here.’ And that’s true today.”

Council President Blaine Griffin embraces Councilwoman Jasmin Santana before her speech. Santana is a major lobbying factor in how CentroVilla received council’s financial support. Credit: Mark Oprea

Santana, who opted to “speak from the heart” instead of using a planned speech, spoke through tears recalling the political effort needed to bring CentroVilla25 to reality.

Contextualizing what may be one of the top successes of her term, Santana spoke about how CentroVilla25 acts as cultural spoke — a link between the wishes of her mother’s generation and the reality of the generation under her.

“We’re trying to see the promise land,” she told the crowd, wiping tears. “And maybe we won’t see it completely. But our kids will.”

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