West Side Market Nonprofit Board Announced, Master Plan Unveiled

About a year after Mayor Justin Bibb announced plans to have a new non-profit lead the revitalization of the West Side Market, City Hall on Thursday released a first-phase, 64-page master plan detailing a rough blueprint of what’s to come in 2023, from possible seating additions to future ideas for the market’s parking lot.

The report, which was compiled by consultants from Market Ventures, dovetails with the announcement of the new Cleveland Public Market Corporation, the nonprofit that will take over management from the Department of Public Works sometime in 2023 and operate with a 15-person board of directors—including Ward 3 Councilman Kerry McCormack, Ohio City Inc. Director Tom McNair and Amanda Dempsey, the previous Market manager.

Jessica Trivisonno, senior strategist of the West Side Market, said the data-heavy report produced by Ted Spitzer and Hugh Boyd, the heads of Market Ventures, is key to deciding how to wield a nonprofit’s budget. Especially important since when CPMC takes over, the historic public market will no longer have access to city subsidies, which have tripled to $740,000 since 2019.

“I feel really confident,” she said, “that with all of this information and with this data that it puts the advisory committee and the board in a really nice position to make sure that any physical changes or programmatic changes really will support what the market needs.”

Though the potential upgrades and proposed fixes aren’t well-defined, the report suggests ways in which the West Side Market could come to match similar public markets Spitzer and Boyd have made-over, including the Essex Street Market in New York and the Findlay Market in Cincinnati’s growing Over-The-Rhine district.

Ideas that have been tossed around forever make appearances here — expanded seating, spaces for pop-ups, events, etc.

While capital repairs  are in progress, including the $1.9-million repair job on the clock tower and $1.8 million in plumbing fixes, the consultants tapped into what visitors want to see in the future. A survey of 444 visitors (respondents being mostly white and mostly over the age of 50), brought some predictable feedback.

“In terms of what they would like to see changed,” the report reads, “the three top responses were more vendors, update the facilities and add seating.”

The problem of how to add new vendors is not a new one. As of September, 22 percent of the market’s food hall sat vacant. Outside, in its produce arcade, roughly half the stalls are empty.

The idea, the report suggests, is to better match rent percentages to the profit potential of the vendor—meaning a loose-leaf tea pop-up in its first year will pay less rent than a legacy brand or a high-end prepared foods stand.

“The nonprofit manager will remove the rent setting decision from the political process,” the report reads, “with the goal of creating an equitable rent structure.”

As for the parking lots, developable land is at a premium in Ohio City.

“It’s something people have talked about for ages right. What to do with the parking lot,” Trivisonno said.  “And I don’t know when or what that looks like, but making sure that, again, we’re never doing anything to the detriment of the market.”

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This article appears in Feb 8-21, 2023.