That’s the goal of Patrick Kearns, the head of Re:Source Cleveland, formerly Refugee Response, whose Ohio City Farm will be seeing an addition to its current property off Bridge Ave. and West 24th: a new 4,000-square-foot international farmers market complete with a kitchen and commerical space, opening by the spring of 2025.
Bolstered by a $150,000 grant last week from Cuyahoga County, the market is, Kearns told Scene, about 75 percent set towards its funding goal of at least half a million dollars.
The intention to construct a market just a few blocks from the city’s most famous one isn’t, Kearns said, just another resource for Ohio City Farm’s staff members—many of which are refugees from Syria, Ukraine, Afghanistan and Central America. It’s a corollary of the last year’s name change, to better serve residents at home, as well.
“It’s so kids from CMSD schools, or adults at CMHA residences—they can have the experience of going into the field, picking something, learning about it, bringing it to the kitchen, preparing it, and having something to take home at the same time,” Kearns said.
Though the market’s renderings have yet to pass design review, it will most likely have spaces for 13 vendors: eight offering produce and five selling prepared foods.
That farm-to-market proximity, Kearns said, is what will give the Ohio City Farmers Market—the working name for the facility—a leg up over the West Side Market down the street. And for exotic produce you couldn’t get fresh anywhere else, like Indian Bitter Gourd and Thai Eggplant. “Maybe in some of the Asiatown markets,” Kearns said. “But you’re not getting locally grown produce.”
Along with Irishtown Bend Park in development, the new Ohio City Farmers Market will act as another jewel in the area, and provide amenities not available at the farm itself.
It also, Kearns said, would allow Ohio City Farm to keep its nine staff members on payroll in the winter months.
“It really comes down to, How can we have a starting wage that goes all year round,” he said, “where we don’t have furlough people in the dead of winter?”
The Ohio City International Farmers Market is set to break ground later this year.
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This article appears in Jan 3-16, 2024.
