Mike Turczyk last week announced that after 36 years in business, Turczyk Meats would be closing up shop at the West Side Market. It is not the only stand that’s expected to shutter this year, as vacancies, especially in the produce section, pile up.
With precise regularity, a stand closure triggers a fresh bout of news stories about the market and its ongoing issues. Cleveland’s landmark survived, and thrived, for more than a century, cementing itself in the hearts and bellies of Clevelanders along the way. But the signs of trouble and the stresses of change have been apparent in the recent decade. Shoppers behave differently now compared to, say, 1990. Ohio City is a far different beast than it was two decades ago. The building is old and in need of repairs.
Turczyk’s departure and public announcement pinning the blame on the city of Cleveland, which owns and manages the market, has instigated the most recent stories and even drew a lengthy press release from councilman Kerry McCormack that sympathized in almost every way with Turzcyk’s complaints. That release, which tackles some of the same topics as below, can be found here.
Anyway, some frequently asked questions and answers on the market front:
Should the city continue to manage the market?
No. Absolutely not. It’s clear that the city has mismanaged the market. It’s hard to gather a consensus when it comes to the WSM, but on this front, there’s near unanimity. From long-delayed fulfillment of work orders to hazardous working conditions to a predictably obstinate display of entrenchment on almost every issue, the city has ushered in many of these problems.
Would a nonprofit management structure solve everything?
Possibly, but it can’t be worse than what’s going on now.
Are the current issues new?
Some, but not all. Many of the complaints have been voiced for years and years, including the city’s insistence on year-to-year leases instead of multi-year agreements. By its nature, the West Side Market is slow to come around to change, but when it comes to the mixture of the tenants and the introduction of new stands, the city, once again, can place the blame at no one’s feet besides its own. Remember when Kate’s Fish announced it would be opening a new, separate stand to focus on retail, seafood shack products, for example? That was a year and a half ago. You’ll notice no progress at that empty stall, the former stinky fish spot back by Maha’s. Last we heard, the necessary permit had been stalled on someone’s desk at City Hall.
Does the mix of vendors need to change?
Yup. But, as McCormack said in his release, the city can also place a role by using the department of economic development to guide new ideas and owners into the market, helping them grow with low-interest or no-interest loans and grants. But the market’s vendor selection in general needs to be more diverse and what’s offered needs to better compete with farmer’s markets, Heinen’s, Trader Joe’s, etc.
When will this get better?
Again, change is slow to come to the corner of Lorain and West 25th, but it’s clear that nothing will substantively change until Frank Jackson is out of office. Stakeholders, tenants and McCormack himself have asked City Hall to explore a transition to a nonprofit management structure and have received a firm no from Jackson.
City-level bureaucracy combined with an opinionated and diverse tenant mix of dozens of vendors means consensus is hard. Hell, the original Monday/Wednesday/Friday/Saturday schedule was christened to run the opposite days that the Central and East Side public markets were open. Those closed in 1988. It took until this decade to add Sunday hours. That, plus the paid combined parking lot, were seismic shifts to the market’s culture, and those took years to achieve.
Is paid parking a problem?
No.
Is general availability of parking a problem?
No.
Will people still complain about parking?
Always.
How else could and should the market be modernized?
There’s that half-empty produce concourse, for starters, that is ripe for something useful and interesting. That was the subject of a proposal from Alan Glazen and others earlier this year. McCormack mentioned space that’s vacant on the second floor that, like the produce aisle, is basically a blank slate for something to engage the public — a cafe, seating, etc. There’s also the issue not so much of the hours but the lack of events that leverage tourists into paying customers. Markets in Cincinnati and Columbus and Toronto have evolved over time to include those and other options, navigating modern shopping and visitor trends to chart a course for their public markets that lifts up vendors. Again, things take time, but inertia has given way to deterioration in the face of viable alternatives.
Does this over simplify a lot of the issues?
Yes and no.
Is the main issue Frank Jackson?
Yup.
This article appears in Dec 11-17, 2019.
They need to address the hours of operation. By the time I get off work 5pm they are closed for business.
We were in Madrid, Spain not too long ago and went to an old neighborhood market that had fallen into neglect and disrepair, but then was rescued and transformed into a popular destination for locals and tourists alike…The Mercado de San Miguel. There is a central seating area and counters against the windows and parts of the wall around the perimeter, wine and beer can be purchased at various stands and carried with you around the market as you stop at any stand you wish to buy tastes of what each stand has to offer. You can place your empty glasses and tapas plates down as you wander around, and a service cart will come to pick them up. The market is thriving. Every stand had something amazing to offer. Evening hours are an absolute must. Let’s help the West Side Market transform into something vibrant like this! http://mercadodesanmiguel.es
Not to worry, I’m sure Taxin Jackson will come up with another ma$$ive property tax increase on us homeowners to come up with the $5 million + needed to rehabilitate the West Side market!!!
After all, it’s only more free taxpayer money that they can spend (or waste) as much as they want!!!
Keep marketing to peasants and you’ll go broke. Keep trying to respond to complaints of peasants and you’ll go broke. Keep trying to please Vince and you’ll go broke. Sinpleton blames everything on Jackson. What a fool.
The West Side Market must change. There is no reason why it can’t have a greater variety of stands like the Pike Place Market in Seattle. There are lots of food stands that have been owned by families for generations, but there are also a variety of other products offered such as fresh flowers, preserved foods, prepared foods, crafts, clothing, antiques, all kinds of things. There’s no reason why we can’t have a market like that. None.
The people at Kate’s told me that cannot get a loan from a bank to build out the stand because the city won’t offer a lease longer than a year. This makes sense because the bank would want to see that there is a high likelihood a loan will be repaid and without a long term lease that is problematic.
The WSM continues to exist in a social vacuum … actually multiple vacuums. One is the divide between long-time, family-run stands and new food trends. Another is the divide that discourages long-term investment in individual spaces due to merchant inability to secure multi-year leases which create viable business loan opportunities and a better environment. But the worst divide is the space between the ears of inAction-Jackson and the stooges that have been left to their own, inept devices.
The wasted outside space along the eastern perimeter begs for attention, yet gets little more than continued gobble-d-gook from City Hall. Glaring example … Thanksgiving has come and gone, another holiday season beckons. Where is a temporary stand selling Christmas trees … especially to those living in the neighborhood without cars? Where is the ingenuity to create a space for local farm-grown, co-op grown, and other local produce?
I could go on, but will end with a comparison of a beloved civic treasure and a mayoral pipe-dream. Do we want to keep a 100+ year old gem or turn a different neighborhood into an unwanted dirt-bike attraction, soon to be overgrown with weeds, discarded garbage, drug paraphernalia and crime? Just sayin …
El Mercado de San Miguel is a tourist haven; it’s in an area where barely anyone lives anymore and so it’s become a restaurant. It would be a shame if the West Side Market lost its character of amn ethnic marketplace. It remains the only place in town to get many fresh, quality specialty items. Other retailers only stock vacuum-packed imposters that taste like plastic.
Frank Jackson has checked out. The people he hires are morons. What do you expect?
The WSM is just another patronage trough filler.
Is there anything, just one thing, that the city can manage?
You should visit the deplorable conditions that exist at City Hall. Visit the twenty year old hole in the ceiling on the fifth floor. Enjoy the HVAC mechanicals that existed before they invented a thermostat, currently you only have off and on, heating and cooling. Get ready for your annual sick building syndrome from the utter lack of air quality, maybe OSHA should be notified? Talk about Sustainability 2019? City Hall wastes so much water, heating and electricity. Faucets/urinals leak gallons of water each day. Windows are left open because it’s 80 degrees indoors during a polar vortex. Soon the Band-Aids will fail and City Hall will crumble from lack of management and proper maintenances. They’ll hire a consultant to tell them they’ve missed managed the building and the City should build anew.
Frank and His Rat Pack will destroy one of Cleveland’s jewels in order to save it. They will either do nothing and allow the WSM to empty out and close, or they will do too little, too late, and allow the WSM to empty out and close.
But hey, Cleveland will be the envy of the thug and lowlife world when it gets its dirt bike track. Scumbags will come from all over the world to ride on it after they terrorize drivers and pedestrians while getting to it.
How many more years are we going to allow SnoozerLoser Frank to remain in office and ruin this city? The time to start planning to defeat him in 2021 is NOW…even before the twenty-year boondoggle of Frank Jackson Blvd.(AKA the Opportunity Corridor) is finished.
Cleveland has been without a mayor for too damn long!
This article gives McCormack too much credit. He hasn’t stepped foot in the market until recently. He has done nothing since he took over for Cipperman, who was also worthless!!! The real estate deal across street is about to fall through because of city incompetence. This is a big enough issue, that if McCormack doesn’t have cajones to fix it, then he should step down