Hispanic Heritage Month Spotlight: CentroVilla will include a market, retailers, a restaurant and more

A new neighborhood is taking root on West 25^th street.

That’s not an overstatement.

This summer, ground was broken on CentroVilla 25, a transformational $12 million project in the Clark-Fulton neighborhood’s  La Villa Hispana cultural district.

The space — an adaptive reuse of a vacant building — will feature twenty micro-retail kiosks, a commercial kitchen, a business incubator, Latino and neighborhood service organizations, an outdoor plaza, a restaurant and arts & culture programming. It will create 120 permanent jobs in Cleveland and 70 across Ohio, and is expected to open next fall.

In honor of Hispanic Heritage month, GCP caught up with Jenice Contreras (pictured above), CEO for The Northeast Ohio Hispanic Center for Economic Development, to discuss the transformational project.

Could you share some background on the project?

CentroVilla has huge significance to the Latino community in Northeast Ohio. We’ve been here for a really, really long time and have a rich history in Northeast Ohio. But we really haven't had a place.

We have not had a marker on a map for our community, or a place where our community can be celebrated and elevated.

CentroVilla is transformational in that sense; it has been a hope and dream of the Latino community to have a place for so long. So, it is a huge responsibility for me and my organization to finally bring this project to our region.

What makes it unique?

Cleveland has a lot of amazing projects happening, but what is the secret sauce of CentroVilla?  It is community focused — done by the people, for the people.

Why this location?

We're trying to revitalize the commercial corridor of West 25th Street and the central part of the corridor, separated by I-90 and 71, where there's really nothing right now.

We want to create some energy on that corridor, and provide opportunities to entrepreneurs who otherwise would lack affordable retail spaces in the neighborhood.

It's the kind of epicenter that can spur additional development.

How are you choosing vendors?

Folks who are aspiring to own a kiosk started training in May training and signed letters of intent with us a long time ago.
We actually have more entrepreneurs interested than available space, so we've made it kind of a competition.

How are you determining who gets the spaces?

Readiness.

They’ve had technical assistance around developing their plan, building a brand and working on their financials.  In the next month, entrepreneurs are going to be presenting this to us.

Our goal is, ‘how do we maximize this opportunity to engage as many entrepreneurs as possible who have been wanting to take a leap but have struggled for many, many different reasons?’

What is the time frame for completion?

We are in construction. If all goes well,  we're hoping by this time next year we will be able to celebrate a grand opening.

I have heard CentroVilla described as a marketplace or a shopping center, but it's so much more.

There are so many elements around placemaking, cultural preservation and opportunity. That’s what makes this project so unique and magical.

I never anticipated doing a $12 million project. I was just trying to figure out how we were going to get businesses on the West 25^th Street corridor. We went from a little market to this initiative, and it all just started with addressing a need.

We're super proud. And we hope that this is the beginning of other projects — that this really opens up the door to other developers, other folks in the community, other communities and other neighbors in the region to be inspired.