SmallBoxRendering.jpg

A composite rendering shows what small-scale retail spaces made from recycled shipping containers might look like in downtown Cleveland's Warehouse District. A nonprofit group and a local start-up company are promoting a plan to line the edges of parking lots in the district with small, temporary stores.

(Historic Warehouse District Development Corp., Sixth City Studio)

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A plan to line the edges of Warehouse District parking lots with low-cost retail space has picked up $40,000 in seed money, between grassroots donations and two grants awarded this week.

The nonprofit Historic Warehouse District Development Corp. and Cleveland Container Structures, a local start-up company, hope to open downtown's first shipping-container stores in the spring. Their project, Small Box, won two $10,000 grants on Tuesday through an awards program focused on community development.

Those grants, sponsored by Enterprise Community Partners, Cleveland Neighborhood Progress and Ohio Savings, added to nearly $20,000 in donations that the project amassed during an online contest. More than 180 donors kicked in money, anywhere from $10 to $2,000, toward a concept meant to enliven downtown dead zones and support retail growth in the center city.

"The word I keep using is 'overwhelmed'," said Thomas Starinsky, the Warehouse District group's associate director. "I'm overwhelmed at the fact that the community came through on a small project that we brought forward, turning it into something really significant."

Starinsky and Michael Rastatter, who runs Cleveland Container Structures, hope to start out with three to five shipping containers housing a handful of small-scale stores. The project might cost $80,000 to $100,000, though the partners still are honing their numbers and looking at ways to raise the rest of the money.

At least seven entrepreneurs have expressed interest in the shipping-container stores, which would be temporary spaces with low overhead and high visibility.

"That's the missing link in downtown Cleveland -- retail," said Richard Sheehan, a real estate broker who sits on the Warehouse District corporation's board and leads its retail committee. "And it's usually the last to come."

Collectively, participants in Enterprise's Nurture an Idea contest raised $48,000 through the online crowd-funding challenge, which ran from Oct. 14 to Nov. 8.



On Tuesday, a panel of judges also awarded $25,000 to Slavic Village Development, a nonprofit group, for a program designed to get empty and foreclosed homes into the hands of new owners willing to make repairs. KeyBank sponsored that grant, the Enterprise Leadership in Community Innovation Award.