CLEVELAND — The majority of Tower City Center was built in the 1920s, according to Jason Russell, the vice president of operations and leasing for Bedrock, the company that bought Tower City in 2016.

Now, nearly 100 years later, these new owners are working to give this downtown Cleveland landmark a comeback, but with a twist.  

“Tower City has such a strong history in northeast Ohio, originally the train station where everyone came into Cleveland and then redeveloped in the late 1980s and early 1990s to become the Tower City Center and Mall, and over the last few years, we have been transforming this from a mall to more of a destination marketplace,” Russell said.

“We’re right here in that transitional phase as we move toward the marketplace feel. We have been able to bring in a lot of new entrepreneurs here," she added.

The company signed 17 new leases in Tower City in 2022.

Russell said a majority of these new businesses are Black owned, including Unscript’d Boutique, owned by Mary Allen. 

Allen said she opened her first 600-square-foot brick and mortar shop inside of Tower City in February of 2022, and since then, she’s upgraded to a 5,000-square-foot space in the same building. 

“For me to be a first-generation business owner, it feels good to pave the way for my other family members, like my son,” Allen said.

She wants to help other small business owners succeed by hosting classes and sharing tips she’s learned along the way. 

“It is just important to just share it [the knowledge],” she said. “You don’t want to be so greedy, thinking that you being greedy is going to make you more successful because it is not.”​