When the Dave’s Market closed down four years ago off Payne Avenue in Asiatown, the neighborhood said goodbye to two of its greatest assets: a well-stocked supermarket and a place to meet and mingle with neighbors.
Come 2028, that won’t be the case as the site is set to become Mingyue Place, a 120-unit apartment complex in two buildings. Advocates and a new Asiatown Culture Committee hope the project helps form a new town square of sorts.
Asiatown has long suffered from a lack of public spaces and population declines. It’s why Mingyue, Chinese for “bright moon,” has been designed to become Asiatown’s town square in the next couple of years, advocates and a new Asiatown Culture Committee say. Midtown Cleveland Inc., the area’s community development corporation, is lined up to take over the pop-up park space nearby with intentions of building an actual green space.
“This has always been a priority for us,” MidTown executive director Ashley Shaw told Scene.
The Mingyue project “allows us to reach two very important goals for our community: attract residents and bring amenities to the residents already here,” she said.
And not the usual fare. The vast majority of new business in Asiatown in the past few decades has been in food or beverage.
As a 2020 “Imagine Asiatown” report showed, residents hoped for other kinds of development. They wanted “a bookstore” an “activity center,” “affordable housing” and “incentives to bring people back,” according to a survey.
And they wanted a library, which will now become a reality. A satellite branch of the Cleveland Public Library, stocked with books in Chinese, is set to open up on the first floor of Mingyue’s North Building.
But will this be enough for new tenants? Most of the neighborhood’s Asian population is of an older demographic, which has left Shaw and her cultural committee figuring out how exactly to attract a younger crowd. One that won’t step on the toes of existing businesses.
“We wanted to be intentional about figuring out a way to tenant or redevelop the Dave’s property that doesn’t cannibalize our existing businesses,” Shaw said.
Groundbreaking for Mingyue is planned to begin in December. The city still needs to approve final designs by the developer, NRP Group. Construction will last about two years, with a June 2028 opening.
A summer Shaw hopes will see a new Asiatown finally come into being.
“I think that, just in terms of the physical location, central on Payne,” she said, “this can really start to be, as it develops, the heart of the neighborhood.”
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