CLEVELAND — The walls are up, lighting is going in, and a lifelong dream for Jenice Contreras is coming to life before her eyes. CentroVilla25, a new Latin “ethnic” market coming to Cleveland’s Clark-Fulton neighborhood is on track to open this coming fall.
“Every day when I walked down West 25th and look at that building, it's like, ‘wow.’ Because you have an idea. You just have an idea,” Contreras said in a recent interview with 3News anchor Dave Chudowsky. “Now to see it happening, to be able to see it, and it's like, oh my gosh, it's really happening. It's surreal. It's literally surreal every day.”
Covering more than 32,000 square feet, the market will be home to around 20 independently owned micro-businesses.
“Half of them will be food-based, so think about your fast food Latino like tacos and bananas, anything with a Latino flavor as well as mercantiles, jewelry, flowers, products and services,” Contreras explained.
CentroVilla25 will also feature a commercial kitchen for food truck owners or other businesses to run their enterprise. Contreras hopes it will draw customers from both near and far. As the executive director of the Northeast Ohio Hispanic Center for Economic Development, she’s tasked with neighborhood redevelopment efforts here in Cleveland’s Clark Fulton neighborhood - better known locally, as La Villa Hispana.
“There's so many things happening in this neighborhood that don't get the visibility, and so we hope CentroVilla25 elevates the visibility in the neighborhood as a destination place as well as this ethnic enclave for our city.”
This is the city and the neighborhood Jenice Contreras loves. Born in Puerto Rico, she moved to Cleveland at age 10, where she grew up on West 30th and Clark Avenue, down the street from Lincoln West High School, where she graduated.
But getting here wasn’t easy – she juggled school, work and motherhood along the way. Prior to her current role, she worked as a Public Health Consultant helping to administer Federal grants through the Health and Resources Services Administration.
"I know that a lot of folks in the Latino community have dreamt of a better neighborhood, better resources...and so to get the opportunity to lead the charge and making that dream for so many a reality is really mind blowing for me," Jenice added.
Her focus over the last decade has been raising 12 million dollars to garner the support needed for this project, with many obstacles to overcome on that path
"I think every time I talk about the project, people say, 'Jenice, you didn't give up,'" she said with a laugh. ”I think I'm just getting started."
Along the way, Contreras has made it a point to also advocate for others.
"As a Latina, as a woman of color, equity matters, opportunities matter. As a mother of two black Latino sons, it impacts all of us. And so I think we have to know the realities of the environment that we're in, that racism is real, that systemic racism is real and fight and advocate and be an ally for others," she said.
Contreras now has her eye on the need for affordable housing and other projects - including one big dream for the future.
"I have this aspiration of working with our city to change the name of the neighborhood," she told Dave. "We've used for a long time La Villa Hispana as a name to identify the neighborhood, and it came out of decades of work, and so maybe it's that, maybe it's something else. Clark-Fulton just doesn't do it justice...I think with all the respect in the world to the history of the neighborhood, I think we need a neighborhood branding process that speaks to who this neighborhood is."
And by pushing this neighborhood forward, Contreras is also helping paint a brighter future for all of Northeast Ohio.
"Not a whole lot of things make me super emotional. This project, this community, this neighborhood does.”
Northeast Ohio Hispanic Center for Economic Development's annual Entrepreneur of the Year Awards Fundraising Gala is being held Friday, April 19th. Tickets are currently sold out but you can find more information about getting involved here, and to learn more about NEOHCED, visit here.
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