Leave it to a community built by manufacturing to put itself back together again after the 2008 housing crisis. Along a rehabbed Fleet Avenue in Slavic Village, small businesses are blooming as the East Side neighborhood turns to makers to regain some of its former vibrancy. City councilman Anthony Brancatelli remembers that Slavic Village well. “We had 70,000 people in this neighborhood when my parents were growing up,” he says. “It was packed.” Brancatelli shows us some of what’s new.
Campbell’s Sweets Factory
Still in the design and financing stage, the proposed facility at 5001 Fleet Ave. will house the central production operations and offices for the Cleveland popcorn maker. A small retail storefront is planned along one side. It’s a homecoming too: The Campbell family lives in Brancatelli’s ward. “It really emphasizes where we came from,” says Brancatelli. “That’s the history of our neighborhood — the steel mills, the tool-and-die shops, the bakers along Fleet Avenue.”
Fleet Avenue
This neighborhood thoroughfare has been resurfaced and reorganized to become the first green street in Cuyahoga County — complete with bike lanes. Near Fleet Avenue and East 53rd Street, a bioretention park is under construction. A 30-foot deep collection pit will filter rainwater runoff that will be reabsorbed into the ground. “[We are] taking a street that once had a trolley car going down the middle to now being open to pedestrians and bikers,” says Brancatelli.
Saucisson
With their storefront at East 54th Street and Fleet Avenue under construction, Cleveland’s boutique butchers are aiming to be open by the holidays, says Brancatelli. There, pork lovers Melissa Khoury and Penny Barend plan to sell their signature chorizo, beef jerky and other cured meats. Plus, they’re putting in a smoker. “That [storefront] was the old Jaworski Meats,” says Brancatelli. “They really fit our motto of being a maker space.”
