The West Side Market is one of Cleveland, Ohio’s most popular destinations, serving the community for more than a century as both a food hub and cultural gathering place. Located in Cleveland’s Ohio City neighborhood, the market draws more than 800,000 visitors each year to a massive, vaulted concourse and adjacent arcades where 70+ local vendors offer fresh meats, seafood, produce, dairy, baked goods, spices, prepared foods, and more.
While there’s no question that the historic building that houses the West Side Market is an iconic local landmark, operating a bustling market five days a week in an aging building has not been without challenges. The 81,371-square-foot facility lacks heating and cooling, for example, while insufficient cold storage creates logistical challenges for vendors. And though hundreds of thousands of Clevelanders and tourists visit the market each year, there are few places for them to sit while there. This both hinders the customer experience and reduces the amount of time spent in the building, limiting the market’s potential as a venue for connection and community.
This will soon change, however, with the West Side Market currently undergoing a $70 million renovation that will maintain the market’s architectural integrity while dramatically improving its functionality. Planned upgrades, which began in the spring, include adding heating and cooling systems to the central market hall and produce arcade, fully renovating the basement to add vital cooler storage space for vendors, adding seating options and dedicated teaching and commercial kitchens, and creating an event space.
Once completed, these upgrades will increase local access to fresh food, enable new education and entrepreneurship programming to take place at the market, and create more than 140 new, full-time jobs. Most importantly, the large-scale renovation will ensure that the West Side Market remains an anchor in Cleveland for generations to come.
“It’s an exciting day for our city, an exciting day for our region and another example that this is Cleveland’s era from our investments at the airport to the work we’re doing to transform our neighborhoods,” said Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb at the May 2025 groundbreaking event. “This is our time, and it’s going to take more public/private partnerships to keep our momentum possible.”
The comprehensive revitalization of the West Side Market is being led by the Cleveland Public Market Corporation (CPMC), an independent nonprofit that took over day-to-day management of the West Side Market from the City of Cleveland in 2024. Earlier this year, IFF provided CPMC with a $4.5 million bridge loan that helped the organization close on the financing needed to execute the project. Additional sources of funding and financing for the $70 million project include New Markets Tax Credits allocated by Cleveland Development Advisors, with PNC serving as the equity investor; Federal Historic Tax Credits; capital contributions from the Gund and Connor Foundations, as well as the KeyBank Foundation and KeyBank Marketing Department; an Ohio state capital grant; grants from the City of Cleveland, Cuyahoga County, and Cuyahoga County Land Bank; and a Port Authority Sales Tax Exemption, among others.
Scroll down to see architect’s renderings of the renovated facility, along with a round-up of media coverage of this once-in-a-generation reimagination of the local landmark.
Spotlight on the West Side Market Revitalization
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