CentroVilla25, a New Hispanic Food Hall and Business Incubator, Opens in Clark-Fulton Amid Mass Deportation Unease

CentroVilla25, Cleveland’s first true Hispanic market decades in the making, has had its soft opening in January somewhat marred by the ramped up ICE raids of undocumented people. Credit: Mark Oprea

Back in the 1980s and 1990s, local artist Angél Guzman saw the buildings at West 25th and Clark as a potential centerpiece for a La Villa Hispana, a cultural reckoning in Cleveland’s Clark-Fulton neighborhood that would be the equivalent to a Little Italy or Asiatown Plaza.

After three decades of planning, false starts, pivots, leadership changes and fundraising, the dream has become reality with CentroVilla25 — a long-awaited Hispanic food hall, market and business incubator.

“It was not an easy journey to get here,” Jenice Contreras, president of the Northeast Ohio Hispanic Center for Economic Development, told Scene from a table in CentroVilla’s Mercado Verde.

“And so to be able to have an idea, a dream, and have a community wrap around that and commit to it not just for one year, two years—but over a decade?” Contreras added. “It’s really touching and moving to finally have a home.”

And what a home CentroVilla25 has finally become since it soft-opened to the public this winter.

There are the domino tables, which attract weekend tournaments and lunch break games. There are the stands in the Mercado Verde offering carne asada tacos, others hawking Cuban lamb chops and coconut candy. The bluetooth speakers playing Spanish ballads or hall-filling cumbia. About half the space is dedicated to food vendors and the other have to retailers. And the response has been immediate.

The only problem, besides the construction debt and the half dozen vendor spaces awaiting new bars or restaurants, is what’s happening outside of CentroVilla’s lively walls: a federal administration that has begun a ramped-up mass deportation of the country’s undocumented immigrants.

Café Roig owners Ivelisse Roig and Bernardo Tovanche at their CentroVilla shop on Wednesday. Credit: Mark Oprea

Last week, agents from the U.S. Immigrant and Customs Enforcement entered the Cilantro Taqueria in Cleveland Heights intending to arrest an allegedly undocumented cook with a criminal record. ICE walked away instead, Cleveland Magazine reported, with five non-criminal employees, all of which were later detained at the Geauga County Safety Center in Chardon. (Along with 51 others from Cuyahoga County.)

Such a national zeitgeist, as being carried out by a presidential administration that vowed the largest mass deportation scheme in American history, has thrown a wrench into what may have been an otherwise glittering debut for a Latin market decades in the making.

“It’s all definitely been alarming,” Contreras said. “As much as I have planned around CentroVilla and as much as we’ve worked to get this place opened, it’s been soul-crushing to have to think about what would happen if we had an ICE raid.”

It’s a fear that’s led to Contreras creating a kind of ICE playbook: “How do we prepare and consult with legal? What can they do? Do we need to let [ICE] into our building? What kind of documentation are they allowed to ask for? What are they not allowed to ask for?”

Flying Pig Tacos owner Jorge Hernandez said mass deportation culture has taken a back seat to his goal to turn Clevelanders on to his family recipes. “Whether you’re from Russia or you’re from Italy—I don’t care,” he said. “I’m going to take you back to Mexico.” Credit: Mark Oprea

Danielle Chavez, the owner of Sazon Latino, relocated her eatery into CentroVilla some two years after relocating to Cleveland from Havana in 2022. Credit: Mark Oprea

Immigration lawyers have told clients and the general public that targets of ICE officers are free to ask agents whether or not they have a warrant. And anyone awaiting documents not convicted of a crime, Patrick Espinosa, an immigration lawyer in Painesville, told Scene, shouldn’t allow themselves unwarranted anxiety.

That was the general vibe around lunchtime on Wednesday, where dozens packed the Mercado Verde food hall side of CentroVilla, to work on laptops while sipping Puerto Rican coffee or meet with city officials over chicken empanadas.

“We’ve seen all different types of people,” Bernardo Tovanche, the co-owner of Café Roig with partner Ivelisse Roig, told Scene over a café americano. “Cubans are coming here. Venezuelans coming here. You know, people from Nicaragua coming here to figure this out.”

“So, Latinos are excited about this overall,” he added.. “The ones that know—they’re telling their friends to come here, too.”

Over at Sazon Latino is Danielle Chavez, the eatery’s owner who emigrated from Havana, Cuba, with her husband in 2022, and opened up a restaurant soon after.

With Chavez, it’s about the same: a head-down commitment to making true-blue Cuban food mixed with a gratefulness for CentroVilla’s existence from the get-go. (Like everyone else, Chavez was vetted by Contreras’ staff for a sound business plan, financials.)

And affordable rent to make what’s eaten on the regular in Havana.

“It’s all very, very Cuban,” Chavez told Scene, while spooning a helping of congri, a savory rice and beans dish. “All very much from the capital. Everything.”

The hope is the multiplicity of cultures — with food from Venezuela, Mexico, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Puerto Rico — will draw not only Hispanics but all of Cleveland, to learn, explore and commune. Not to mention the cultural and community aspects — domino tournaments, the construction job fairs, the City Council town halls, the birthday parties and dance nights.

The picture will become more clear, Contreras said, in May, when CentroVilla hosts its grand opening.

Until then, vendors like Jorge Hernandez find themselves tasked with growing into a space made their own. Into concocting the right specialty tacos. (The delicious carne asada with street corn, for just one example.) Into brainstorming “cooking experiences.” To mixing in century-old family recipes.

“That’s my goal, to share all of this with the world,” Hernandez told Scene. “Whether you’re from Russia or you’re from Italy—I don’t care. I’m going to take you back to Mexico.”