The City of Cleveland has just allocated $2 million for much-needed upgrades at the aging West Side Market (WSM) in 2020. But therein lays the problem in the thinking of city officials. What if the repairs to the plumbing, electrical systems and other critical repairs needed actually cost $3 million or more? Will the repairs simply cease until more money is wrangled from city council or some other source?
Rather than setting an amount it is willing to spend, the city should commit to fixing the infrastructure problems, no matter how much the repairs cost. Setting a hard and fast amount the city is willing to spend could mean the vendors, who have been struggling with unsanitary conditions for years, will have to wait even longer for overdue repairs to be completed.
One of the toughest issues facing the WSM is something they can’t control: Changing lifestyles. The simple fact is, fewer and fewer folks are cooking these days (indeed, many young people don’t even know how to boil water) so buying the fresh ingredients the vendors at the WSM carry in abundance is of less importance to them.
Many young food consumers today simply want to pick up the phone and have a meal delivered within minutes, even if the food tastes like cardboard and has all of the nutritional value of two-day-old pizza. Their tastes have been trained by corporate food conglomerates to not know the difference between good food and artisanal garbage.
The city has worked with tenants of the WSM to develop a long list of desired improvements, and a cursory glance of the planned changes shows that a great deal of thought and effort went into identifying the needs of the vendors and designing potential solutions. But the devil is in the details, and more importantly, the implementation.
Here’s where the whole thing can fall apart. The two groups, the vendors and city officials charged with managing the changes, are of completely different mindsets. The vendors are the best example of the American entrepreneurial spirit. If they don’t sell their products, they can’t pay the rent, the lights, and their kids’ school tuition. In the truest sense of small business, they have to hustle to stay alive — kill before they can eat.
Compare that to the city officials: They are going to make their $100,000 (or more) per year, no matter what. I’m not suggesting they are lazy or uncaring; I’m just stating a hard, cold fact.
Over the last decade, since Fannie Lewis’ dream, League Park, opened two blocks from our home (and one block from our vineyard and winery Château Hough), I’ve watched city officials drag their feet in terms of instituting programmatic changes that would allow the facility to blossom into the destination attraction it was envisioned to be upon its completion.
To make a business work, be it WSM or League Park (or Château Hough, for that matter) someone has to really bust their ass day in and day out, with a laser-like focus on success. The problem is city officials — while they are good at some things, like running government — don’t have any skin in the game when it comes to running businesses, and probably have too much else on their plates. Again, they’re going to be fine (and well-paid), no matter if WSM grows or closes.
These city directors need to abdicate day-to-day responsibility for these types of businesses to some sharp young folks that work at nonprofits, and whose reputations and compensation packages are directly tied to the success of failure of the businesses they manage.
City officials should jump at the chance to get off the hot seat and let some talented young guns step up to the plate and run these businesses.
From CoolCleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier’s From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author at http://NeighborhoodSolutionsIn