Vine Avenue to Get Modernized – Jan. 1973

For many years, Vine Avenue, south of West 28th Street, was very important to the Puerto Rican community in South Lorain. 

During the early 1960s, there were a half-dozen blocks of thriving businesses, including restaurants, a pharmacy, taverns, several pool halls, three or four small grocery stores, a shoe shine stand, a tailor, churches, a dress shop, a hardware store, the Sheffield Dairy, a Lawson's, the old Hogar Puertoriqueno Club, and Chapel of the Sacred Heart.

But by January 1973, Vine Avenue in South Lorain was a sad sight. 

As the article above, which appeared in the Journal on January 19, 1973 noted, "Windows are broken or boarded up in the few buildings which have not caved in on their own accord. Men amble aimlessly in the dusty afternoon sun toward one of the darkened bars still open on the otherwise deserted street. The scene is Vine Avenue today, six blocks of desolation in Lorain."

Why was it deserted? Two words: urban renewal.

According to the article, "The Vine Avenue area was bought up by the Lorain urban renewal project which purchased huge tracts of land in Lorain under a federal grant. For more than two years now, the urban renewal project has forced businessmen and homeowners on Vine Avenue to move or relocate. Some have never financially recovered."

But it was all done with the goal of improving the area, including the construction of a large modern shopping center right on Vine Avenue. The Lorain Business Development Company laid out its ambitious plans for the area in the 1973 article. 

Today, fifty years later – it's obvious that things didn't work out the way it was planned. 

Sadly, Vine Avenue is largely vacated. The shopping center didn't happen, and there's not a trace of the small family businesses that once made up the heart of the Puerto Rican community. 

I don't know exactly what happened. But it's another example of how well-meaning Urban Renewal plans robbed Lorain of much of its character.