A Washington, D.C.-based developer plans to bring a market hall for Black-owned businesses to MLK Plaza, along with affordable and mixed-income housing at multiple sites in the Hough neighborhood. The market will have a community ownership model through which neighbors can purchase shares of the property and get money back each year. The developer also plans to rehabilitate an empty 10-story building at 9410 Hough Ave. into affordable housing and build apartments on a vacant lot on Crawford Road across the street from MLK Plaza.
In February, Gina Merritt, the principal of the development company, Northern Real Estate Urban Ventures, purchased the Martin Luther King Jr. Plaza shopping center at 9300 Wade Park Ave., which will be home to the Black-owned business market and mixed income housing. Merritt plans to demolish the plaza building, which is currently fenced off and empty, and then redevelop it in four phases.
“My goal is really to invest as much as I can in the Hough neighborhood,” said Merritt, who is working through the initial planning stages of the multi-part development project.
The 9410 Hough property, which Merritt has dubbed “Ninety-Four Ten,” will be 102,826 square feet and have 116 units (56 one-bedrooms and 60 two-bedrooms), according to the project’s website. It will serve people with incomes between $32,000 and $48,000, which is 60% of the area median income (AMI), the developer said in an email. Rent at the 9410 apartments will cost $926 a month for a one-bedroom apartment and $1,109 a month for a two-bedroom apartment. The developer said rent prices, number of units, and square footage are not yet available for the other properties because they’re still in the early stages.
The estimated total cost of all of the phases of the development project is $75 million. Merritt is figuring out the financing for the developments and hopes to start construction on at least one of the buildings by 2025. However, she’s beginning the effort of recruiting businesses for the market hall now.
Next month, Merritt is hosting the “Heighten the Hustle” pitch competition for businesses interested in opening at the Black-owned business market hall through Project Community Capital (PCC), an organization she founded to help underserved communities access jobs and entrepreneurship resources. The competition, which was rescheduled from April, will take place on Saturday, July 15 from 1-4 p.m. at the Hough Multipurpose Center at 8555 Hough Ave. You can sign up to participate by filling out this form — the deadline to register is June 17.
PCC is looking for businesses at all stages to open at the market, and the economic empowerment organization will offer ongoing support and mentorship depending on each individual entrepreneur’s needs, Merritt said.
Reenvisioning MLK Plaza
Merritt said she gets calls and messages from residents sharing memories of the MLK Plaza shopping center at least once a week. Robert P. Madison, who was the first Black person to start an architecture firm in Ohio, designed the building, which opened in the 1970s. Some of the residents remember what the neighborhood was like before the 1966 Hough Riots, also known as the Hough Uprising, and the disinvestment that led to and followed the unrest.
“Folks miss there being hubs of Black business and Black economic opportunity,” Merritt said. “And I’m just so excited about working in this neighborhood, building new assets, and then leveraging the existing assets of the people that live there.”
Lakiesha Smith, who also goes by “Stoney,” remembers Saturday morning trips to the shopping center with her dad. A Lakewood resident who’s originally from East Cleveland, Smith serves as a community ambassador with PCC, helping Clevelanders find jobs and spreading the word about projects like the MLK Plaza development and pitch competition.
“After I did my research on Dr. Gina Merritt and saw that she’s done this so many times with so many communities, it sort of gave me hope for that community. To think about that plaza with Black-owned businesses thriving and working with each other and growing with each other, it just really, really excited me,” Smith said.
Last week, Smith posted a video on Instagram encouraging entrepreneurs to register for the MLK Plaza pitch competition. When she was standing outside of the fenced-off plaza recording the video, people came over to listen in on what she was talking about, Smith said.
Community members also left comments on Smith’s post, sharing their memories of the shopping center and ideas of the types of businesses they would like to see open there. Car Bae, an auto mechanic based on Nottingham Road, expressed interest in opening an auto repair shop at the plaza. Another community member, who shares the name of the owner of a beloved candy store called Ms. Jackie’s, proposed bringing a rendition of the shop back to the shopping center.
Ronika Robinson, who lives in Euclid but grew up in the Hough neighborhood, seconded the idea of reopening a candy store at the plaza. When she was a kid, Robinson would walk to MLK Plaza nearly every day, she said. In addition to Ms. Jackie’s, other businesses at the shopping center included a convenience store, a beauty supply shop, and a clothing store, Robinson said.
“I hope that it becomes a positive beacon like it once was when I was a child in the community,” she said. “And I hope that it brings more Black dollars to circulate through the community, which will in turn bring more Black jobs for people who need jobs in those communities.”
The future market hall space will be about 7,500 square feet. Merritt and her team are still figuring out how many businesses will be able to open there and estimate that the space may fit about 20 businesses.
Community ownership
Merritt hopes that Hough residents will buy into the plaza’s community ownership model and spend their dollars locally. Plus, share owners will get some of their money back each year, she said.
There’s not a one-size-fits-all community ownership model, as the right model to use depends on a community’s specific needs, Devin Culbertson, former director of the national nonprofit Enterprise Community Solutions, wrote in a 2021 article published in Shelterforce Magazine.
In Portland, Oregon, community members can pay between $10 to $100 a month to purchase a share in a mall called Plaza 122 through the Community Investment Trust (CIT), racking up dividends each year. They can cash out at any point. As of March 2023, eight years after CIT’s founding, Plaza 122 had about 300 investors, and the amount cashed out or paid in dividends totaled $100,000, NPR reported.
Merritt and her team have not yet determined the exact structure of the future market’s community ownership model. They plan to offer low-cost shares to community members but haven’t finalized the exact cost or how much members can expect to get back each year. The development firm is considering options for residents to obtain shares, such as earning shares through volunteer work, Merritt said.
“I feel like, as a Black woman investing in a Black neighborhood, that it’s important to create economic opportunity of all kinds. I don’t feel like it should just be me making all of the money. I feel like the people in the community who are going to purchase their goods and services, who are going to live in my buildings, ought to benefit in all kinds of ways,” Merritt said.
Building affordable housing
Merritt’s firm, which has been in business for more than 20 years, has helped develop over 8,000 units of housing and has won 10 awards in the last year for its affordable housing and economic empowerment work, she said. Other projects she has worked on include affordable housing and mixed-use developments in Pittsburgh, D.C., and Jersey City, N.J.
The developer has big plans that are still taking shape. An amenity building adjacent to the 9410 Hough apartments will have a Cleveland Clinic health suite, conference rooms, and workspaces. The 9410 Hough development received $8 million in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds in December 2021, part of former Mayor Frank Jackson’s ARPA proposal. The Cleveland Planning Commission granted final design approval with conditions to the project’s amenity building in February 2022.
In the building on Crawford Road across from MLK Plaza, Merritt envisions live-work spaces and a gallery storefront for artists. The MLK Plaza development and new development on Crawford Road have not yet come before the planning commission or the city.
Timeline, estimated cost, and challenges
Merritt said her plan is to submit for financing for one of the residential buildings by the first quarter of next year, with the goal of beginning construction on at least one of the buildings by 2025. She wants to have a plan for financing and conceptual plans for the market hall ready by then, too.
Merritt plans to supplement private debt and tax credit equity by seeking funding from foundations and applying for subsidies. She expects to start pitching the market hall to foundations in August and wants to have interest from potential funders by the end of the year.
The developer used a loan from Cleveland Development Advisors and a seller take-back note (a loan that the seller of a property offers to a buyer) to purchase MLK Plaza from the Rev. Wesley Toles, of Emerald Resources Inc.
The 9410 Hough project has a funding gap, which Merritt hopes to close by fall. The team previously had to restructure the financing for that project because they didn’t get the funding it needed in time, she said.
Merritt is not daunted by these challenges and said she takes on projects that are difficult and complex, but also important and impactful. She used to work on Wall Street, as an associate at Morgan Stanley, but she decided to do economic empowerment and community development work instead. She wants to make a difference in the lives of people living in communities that have faced disinvestment.
As a developer of color, Merritt has said she received more investment from funders and more opportunities to own projects following the murder of George Floyd. But as she works toward closing on her projects in a changing economy, she doesn’t have generational wealth to rely on and can’t simply wait for the market to correct itself like other developers may be able to do, she said.
Merritt said that she will also need to get the Hough community to trust her and believe in her, knowing that in many cases, community members may hesitate to trust people who have multiple degrees and are from out of town. “And I get that. But I live, eat, breathe, drink this work,” she said.
Since starting the 9410 Hough project in 2021, Merritt has been at the site every month and has held community meetings about that development. Community members who attend the pitch competition next month will get a taste of the MLK Plaza market project, but Merritt said she plans to do a “deep dive” to gather residents’ input on that project in the fall. She wants to hear from Hough residents. (Reach out to Alexis Green, who is managing PCC, at agreen@pccnetwork.net to share your thoughts.)
“We’re trying to bring bold, innovative ideas to the Hough neighborhood because, again, folks in the Hough neighborhood deserve the same kind of bold and beautiful and empowering ideas as any other community,” Merritt said. “So we want the community to be able to benefit economically from where they spend their money.”
You can learn more about the pitch competition for businesses interested in opening at the Black-owned business market hall here, and fill out this form by June 17 to register to participate. You can also follow Project Community Capital on Instagram and Facebook, or visit its website. To get in touch with the team, email Alexis Green at agreen@pccnetwork.net.
Underwriting support for this article was provided by HFLA of Northeast Ohio, which provides interest-free loans to promote the economic self-sufficiency and growth of Northeast Ohioans who are unable to access safe and fair lending resources.
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