CLEVELAND, Ohio — Cleveland’s West Side Market is set to reopen Monday after a fire shut the historic marketplace down for nearly three weeks.
The doors are set to open at 7 a.m.
Tom Szoradei is the chef at the adjacent West Side Market Café.
He said the market has been cleaned up and is looking like new.
“The market inside is tremendous,” said Szoradei. “It’s beautiful.”
It is a dramatic contrast to the way the market looked on the morning of January 30 after the fire damaged stands and left the building covered in soot.
Diane Dever owns Irene Dever Dairy inside the West Side Market. She said they lost everything on their shelves and product had to be thrown away.
“The fire and the smoke destroyed what we owned. We were able to sanitize and save our slicers and our scales and personal belongings, but everything else went into a dumpster,” Dever said.
While the market was being restored at a cost of a quarter of million dollars, vendors lost thousands of dollars of business while their stands were closed down.
Cake Royale Owner Denise Kahwaji said being closed was a big loss for her stand.
“We lost two big holidays. We lost the Super Bowl, and for us, we lost Valentine’s Day, which is for Cake Royale a very big holiday for us. So, several grand I would say,” Kahwaji said.
The West Side Market Café reopened 10 days ago. But, it lost five days of business because of the fire.
“Business for me here has been slower than normal,” said Szoradei. “Obviously we don’t have the draw from the people coming into the market.”
While vendors and business owners lost money during the market shutdown, customers of the West Side Market lost one of their favorite places to shop.
Customers like Carlyce John, of Macedonia, is happy the market is reopening.
“The prices are great. The environment — you get to know people when you shop down here,” she said.
Melissa Schrickel, of Lakewood, said she buys groceries at the market whenever possible. While eating breakfast at the West Side Market Café, she looked inside to see how the market has been cleaned up and restored.
“It looks clean. Could never tell there was a fire there. So, definitely I’ll be back soon,” Schrickel said.
Some believe customers will find the West Side Market restored to the beauty of when it first opened 100 years ago.
Szoradei called it the “polished gem” of Cleveland’s Ohio City.
The West Side Market is to be open 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday and then resume its regular business hours.
For more on the fire and clean-up efforts, click here.
