© Lisa DeJong/Lisa DeJong/The Plain Dealer/cleveland.com/TNS Gregory Zucca is the Director of Economic and Community Transformation for MetroHealth Medical Center, which is located in the Clark-Fulton neighborhood. The Clark-Fulton neighborhood, Northeast Ohio's biggest Hispanic community, is embarking on a well-funded master planning process. Community leaders hope to show how longstanding residents can benefit from huge upcoming investments rather than succumb to displacement through gentrification. Lisa DeJong, Plain Dealer Lisa DeJong/The Plain Dealer

CLEVELAND, Ohio — The concrete and steel bones of the new, 11-story MetroHealth hospital tower rising on the city’s near West Side offer dramatic proof that a $1 billion transformation of the county’s public health system main campus is well under way.

That’s cause for both excitement and fear in the surrounding Clark-Fulton neighborhood, located about 2.5 miles south of downtown.

A wave of real estate activity triggered by MetroHealth’s project, coupled with spillover from redevelopment in the nearby Tremont, Ohio City and Detroit Shoreway neighborhoods, could revitalize a predominantly low-income, Hispanic community that has struggled with poverty for decades.

© Lisa DeJong/Lisa DeJong/The Plain Dealer/cleveland.com/TNS This old awning factory will become a multicultural center on the southeast corner of Seymour Avenue and West 25th Street in the Clark-Fulton neighborhood of Cleveland, pictured here on Friday, February 21, 2020. The Clark-Fulton neighborhood, Northeast Ohio's biggest Hispanic community, is embarking on a well-funded master planning process. Community leaders hope to show how longstanding residents can benefit from huge upcoming investments rather than succumb to displacement through gentrification. Lisa DeJong, Plain Dealer Lisa DeJong/The Plain Dealer

But residents in Clark-Fulton, also known as La Villa Hispana, worry that new investment could push them out by raising rents and property taxes in a process known as gentrification. After seeing that happen in Ohio City, Detroit Shoreway and Tremont, they wonder if they’re next.

“You can already see gentrification, just by the prices,” said Clark-Fulton resident Tanisha Velez, a 27-year-old entrepreneur who wants to stay in Clark-Fulton and nurture her startup business, Cleveland Fresh, which markets healthy microgreens for local shoppers.

© Lisa DeJong/Lisa DeJong/The Plain Dealer/cleveland.com/TNS Antonio Guerra, 27, drinks coffee at Las Tienditas Del Mercado in the Clark-Fulton neighborhood, 2886 W. 25th Street, on Friday, February 21, 2020. Guerra lives in the neighborhood. The recently-opened, micro-incubator space is home to three businesses, including Lara's Cakes and the restaurant El Sabor de Ponce. The Clark-Fulton neighborhood, Northeast Ohio's biggest Hispanic community, is embarking on a well-funded master planning process. Community leaders hope to show how longstanding residents can benefit from huge upcoming investments rather than succumb to displacement through gentrification. Lisa DeJong, Plain Dealer Lisa DeJong/The Plain Dealer

Velez said local leaders are “not bringing the community in and talking to them and asking them what they want to be seeing.”

Creating a vision

To the contrary, community organizations including MetroHealth say they are acutely aware of the challenges facing Clark-Fulton and are serious about mobilizing the neighborhood to take advantage of fresh investment without suffering negative consequences.

To that end, MetroHealth, Ward 14 Councilwoman Jasmin Santana and other partners are launching a 15-month, $280,000 project to create the first comprehensive master plan for the neighborhood’s future in recent memory. A central point will be finding out what residents want.

© Lisa DeJong/Lisa DeJong/The Plain Dealer/cleveland.com/TNS The old Aragon Ballroom is currently being renovated on West 25th Street. The Clark-Fulton neighborhood, Northeast Ohio's biggest Hispanic community, is embarking on a well-funded master planning process. Community leaders hope to show how longstanding residents can benefit from huge upcoming investments rather than succumb to displacement through gentrification. Lisa DeJong, Plain Dealer Lisa DeJong/The Plain Dealer

The project will address everything from housing to community benefits related to development projects, to economic mobility, parks, community health, transportation, internet access, recreation, streetscapes and public art.

© Lisa DeJong/Lisa DeJong/The Plain Dealer/cleveland.com/TNS Las Tienditas Del Mercado, 2886 W. 25th Street, door on left, opened recently in the Clark-Fulton neighborhood of Cleveland. The micro-incubator space on the northwest corner of Seymour Avenue and West 25th Street is home to three businesses, pictured here looking north towards downtown Cleveland on Friday, February 21, 2020. The Clark-Fulton neighborhood, Northeast Ohio's biggest Hispanic community, is embarking on a well-funded master planning process. Community leaders hope to show how longstanding residents can benefit from huge upcoming investments rather than succumb to displacement through gentrification. Lisa DeJong, Plain Dealer Lisa DeJong/The Plain Dealer

The plan could shape future development, and it will inform how Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson channels money into Clark-Fulton through the city’s Neighborhood Transformation Initiative.

How to get involved

© Lisa DeJong/Lisa DeJong/The Plain Dealer/cleveland.com/TNS Cleveland Councilwoman Jasmin Santana represents Ward 14, which includes the Clark-Fulton neighborhood. The Clark-Fulton neighborhood, Northeast Ohio's biggest Hispanic community, is embarking on a well-funded master planning process. Community leaders hope to show how longstanding residents can benefit from huge upcoming investments rather than succumb to displacement through gentrification. Lisa DeJong, Plain Dealer Lisa DeJong/The Plain Dealer

The planning project will kick off with a public meeting at 6 p.m. on April 15 at Family Ministry Center, 3389 Fulton Road, said Ricardo Leon, executive director of the Metro West Community Development Organization, whose service area centers on Clark-Fulton, but also includes the adjacent Stockyards and Brooklyn Centre neighborhoods.

© Lisa DeJong/Lisa DeJong/The Plain Dealer/cleveland.com/TNS Construction is in full swing for the new MetroHealth Medical Center on Friday, February 21, 2020. The Clark-Fulton neighborhood, Northeast Ohio's biggest Hispanic community, is embarking on a well-funded master planning process. Community leaders hope to show how longstanding residents can benefit from huge upcoming investments rather than succumb to displacement through gentrification. Lisa DeJong, Plain Dealer Lisa DeJong/The Plain Dealer

Additional information will be available at the Metro West Facebook page, MetroWestCLE/.

The goal of the first meeting will be to show how residents can get involved in shaping the community’s future, Leon said.

“We want them to feel empowered to participate in this civic process,” he said.

© Lisa DeJong/Lisa DeJong/The Plain Dealer/cleveland.com/TNS Las Tienditas Del Mercado, 2886 W. 25th Street, opened recently in the Clark-Fulton neighborhood of Cleveland. The micro-incubator space is home to three businesses, including Lara's Cakes pictured here in background on Friday, February 21, 2020. The Clark-Fulton neighborhood, Northeast Ohio's biggest Hispanic community, is embarking on a well-funded master planning process. Community leaders hope to show how longstanding residents can benefit from huge upcoming investments rather than succumb to displacement through gentrification. Lisa DeJong, Plain Dealer Lisa DeJong/The Plain Dealer

Sources of funding

MetroHealth and the Cleveland Foundation have each contributed $100,000 to the project, and the city kicked in $50,000. Metro West is raising an additional $30,000. The nonprofit LAND Studio will help coordinate the project.

© Lisa DeJong/Lisa DeJong/The Plain Dealer/cleveland.com/TNS Tanisha Velez, 28, stops often at Las Tienditas Del Mercado in the Clark-Fulton neighborhood, 2886 W. 25th Street, on Friday, February 21, 2020. Velez grew up in the neighborhood and now works for a non-profit in the neighborhood. The recently-opened, micro-incubator space is home to three businesses, including Lara's Cakes and the restaurant El Sabor de Ponce. The Clark-Fulton neighborhood, Northeast Ohio's biggest Hispanic community, is embarking on a well-funded master planning process. Community leaders hope to show how longstanding residents can benefit from huge upcoming investments rather than succumb to displacement through gentrification. Lisa DeJong, Plain Dealer Lisa DeJong/The Plain Dealer

The group has chosen a team led by Philadelphia-based WRT, a planning and urban design firm, to produce the plan.

The project will dovetail with the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority’s $414,000 study of the potential for a bus-rapid transit line on West 25th Street, extending from Ohio City south through Clark-Fulton to Old Brooklyn.

Preserving heritage

And it will consider how Clark-Fulton could preserve its ethnic heritage as a center of Hispanic life and culture in Northeast Ohio.

Once a haven for textile manufacturing and beer breweries, Clark-Fulton was populated in the 19th and early 20th centuries by Germans, Slovaks, Czechs, Poles and Italians.

Today, nearly half of the neighborhood’s 8,000 residents are Hispanic, although it also includes African-Americans and non-Hispanic white residents. A majority of the Hispanics hail from Puerto Rico, while others are from Guatemala, Honduras, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador and Mexico.

More recently, the community has added a new layer of refugee immigrants from the Republic of Congo, Sudan, Somalia and Nepal.

Moving up and out

Historically, urban communities formed by immigrant ethnic groups in Cleveland have dispersed as succeeding generations migrate from city neighborhoods to suburbs.

That pattern is occurring in Clark-Fulton, where some residents have decamped to Brooklyn Centre and suburbs including Parma and North Olmsted.

Leon envisions a future in which Clark-Fulton’s Latino heritage can be preserved, even as it becomes more ethnically and socioeconomically diverse.

In the context of changing real estate dynamics, Leon, Santana and Greg Zucca, director of MetroHealth’s nonprofit development corporation, are eager to debunk what they call phony offers to buy houses made by real estate agents falsely claiming to represent the city or MetroHealth. Neither entity is making such offers, they said.

Dr. Akram Boutros, president and CEO of the MetroHealth System, sees the planning effort as an essential part of turning Clark-Fulton into a robust, sustainable community where residents choose to stay.

“If you can’t get the heart of the community to want to stay and invest, then external efforts are going to take hold,” he said, suggesting that outside interests could determine the future if current residents trickle away.

Boutros said MetroHealth sees itself as an anchor institution committed to improving community health in every sense.

Hospital in a park

In addition to building a new, $767 million hospital tower, MetroHealth’s transformation plan calls for removing the fortress-like outpatient clinic and parking garage built along West 25th Street in the 1990s, which has long been viewed as a defensive barrier.

In its place, MetroHealth plans to build a 12-acre park, which would become the first significant public outdoor space in a neighborhood that badly needs one. That project could begin by 2023, Boutros said.

According to a recent study by the Trust for Public Land, Clark-Fulton is one of the five neighborhoods in the city most in need of a high-quality park. Today, it has only one small city pool and two rudimentary, outdated playgrounds.

MetroHealth is also investing $60 million to build three new apartment buildings along West 25th Street. It plans to break ground this year on a 72-unit building with affordable apartments on the site of a parking lot it owns at West 25th and Sackett Avenue. The project will include an “economic opportunity center,” providing workforce training.

The two other apartment projects will provide market-rate units and apartments for medical residents, along with retail spaces for local businesses.

Rising cohesion

Clark-Fulton’s reputation suffered in 2013 when three women — Michelle Knight, Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus — were rescued after being held captive for a decade by Ariel Castro in a home on Seymour Avenue, technically located within the western boundary of Tremont. Castro hanged himself in prison in 2013 shortly after starting a life sentence.

As the influence of the MetroHealth project begins to spread, Clark-Fulton and La Villa Hispana are showing signs of rejuvenation and greater cohesion.

The Hispanic Business Alliance partnered with the family of the late Cesi Castro, Ariel Castro’s uncle, to turn a former grocery operated by Cesi at West 25th and Seymour into Las Tienditas del Mercado, a business incubator that’s often packed with customers. Tenants include Lara’s Cakes and the El Sabor de Ponce sandwich shop.

Across West 25th, developer Rick Foran is transforming the former Astrup Awning factory into an arts-centered development that will include a community arts facility operated by the Cleveland Museum of Art, along with programs offered by other tenants including the Boys & Girls Clubs of Cleveland, Inlet Dance Theatre and LatinUS Theatre Co. The museum plans to begin operations there early next year.

Further south, at West 25th and Althen Avenue, developer Ali Faraj is putting the finishing touches on a renovation of the long dormant Aragon Ballroom, a 14,000-square-foot entertainment venue built in the 1930s that should be open by summer.

Councilwoman Santana said she expects to see the Aragon busy soon with weddings, quincea 1/4 u00f1eras — traditional celebrations held when girls turn 15 — and other community events.

Strong demand

Other signs of investment are easily visible along West 25th Street.

They include the recently opened Half Moon Bakery, at 3460 West 25th St., opposite the MetroHealth construction site.

Co-owner Lyz Otero, who moved from Puerto Rico to Cleveland with her parents 23 years ago, said it took five years for her and her husband, Gerson Velasquez, to obtain $150,000 in loans to pay for kitchen equipment, showing how hard it can be for local businesses to get a toehold.

When Half Moon opened recently, she said it ran out of empanadas and pastries by 1 p.m. because hospital employees quickly bought everything on offer.

“I didn’t expect to be that busy,” she said. “We weren’t prepared for the demand that came.”

For Santana, such stories are proof of the value of staying rooted in Clark-Fulton, along with the urgency of getting ahead of market forces with a solid plan for the future.

“This is our moment,” she said. “This is our moment.”

HAVING YOUR SAY:

What: The kickoff for the Clark-Fulton master plan.

When: Wednesday, April 15, at 6 p.m.

Where: Family Ministry Center, 3389 Fulton Road.

Info: MetroWestCle.org.

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