International Market Finds Home in Fargo

Growing up in Somalia, Fowzia Adde learned the importance of family-owned businesses from her mother, who ran a bakery and made cakes and bread for local restaurants. Much of their daily shopping was done at the open market where rows of other family vendors sold fresh produce, meat and cloth.

“It had this feeling that you come to shop and communicate and look,” Adde said. “Your eyes have lots of things to see. The colors, even just the way the tomatoes are put together made the market different.”

When war broke out in her home country, Adde and her family fled to a refugee camp in neighboring Kenya. In the camp, she and her siblings worked in another business her mother opened to help support the family.

“That’s how we survived our wholes lives, so we kind of learned from her,” Adde said.

Adde, who settled in Fargo with her husband in 1997, sees the need for a place for these family-based businesses to thrive. She, along with the City of Fargo and the Fargo Housing Authority, have developed plans to create an international market plaza to house businesses run by new Americans living in the area. The market will serve as a gathering place for people of different cultures and will involve the entire community.

Coming to Fargo, Adde found a lack of resources for immigrants and the growing refugee populations to provide for their families. The new Americans also struggled with communication issues and felt a lack of community interaction.

Adde had the idea for the international market more than five years ago. She saw a market that housed family-owned businesses and served food and hand-made goods to the community as a solution.

“It started as an organizing project,” Adde said. “People who had the same mission, who wanted to better their family, they started talking about what they could do.”

Adde developed the Immigrant Development Center in 2003 as a way to increase the understanding of diversity in Fargo-Moorhead and provide assistance for ethically diverse populations to get involved in the community.

“The Immigrant Development Center put together a meet-and-greet with mayors and the city commissioners,” Adde said. “That’s where the idea came from. It was a real grassroots project.”

The international market, which would include 12 businesses owned by new Americans and low-income families, would serve as a jumping-off point to a better life in America, according to Adde.

“This idea that Fowzia is talking about is sort of like the American dream,” Dan Mahli, a senior planner for the City of Fargo said. “I think it’s a great place for people from all over the world to come together and live and work together. Ultimately, it’s about making Fargo feel like home to the people that are here already.”

“We want it to be a place of community and learning,” Adde said. “We are working to make the market a place of working together, at the same time supporting each other to thrive in our community.”

The Immigrant Development Center, along with the City of Fargo and the Fargo Housing Authority, began examining how to create the international market.

The group visited markets similar to what they hoped to form in Fargo’s international market. The Global Market in Minneapolis, which opened in 2006, includes restaurants and shops that sell handcrafts from around the world. The businesses are owned and operated by people of diverse cultures and backgrounds.

“I remember meeting a guy (who) talked about coming here, not speaking any English,” Mahli said of a visit to the Global Market. “Someone at church stopped in and wanted him to come make tortillas (in the market)… He was able to get citizenship and now his kids are in school. Last year, he sold over 2 million tortillas. It’s just amazing.”

The planning group then met with the company responsible for getting funding for the Global Market. The Midwest Minnesota Community Development Corporation (MMCDC) is a nonprofit company that provides business and community development services.

The MMCDC helped Adde acquire funding for feasibility and marketing research through the University of Mary in Bismarck, N.D.

“First we did the feasibility study to see if it was possible—to see if this is a place an ordinary North Dakotan will come to have a coffee—maybe try a Turkish coffee,” Adde said. “The marketing study was done to understand if the market could sustain itself.”

Both studies showed promise for the international market in Fargo. The group shifted their attention to a possible location for the market.
The Fargo Housing Authority became aware of a property for sale at 414 11 St. N. in Fargo, previously a Cooper’s Tires store.

“Last year we acquired the site and thought that might be an appropriate site,” Lynn Fundingsland, director of the housing authority said. “It’s close to downtown, near the college and hoped to attract people to the site.”

The next hurdle became funding the more than $1 million project.

The MMCDC again assisted in applying for a grant through the Office of Community Service (OCS) within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The grant was designed in the 1960s as part of the “War on Poverty” to benefit individuals with low income and help them become economically self sufficient, according to the OCS Web site.

North Dakota was one of four states that had never applied for the program, a reason Mahli credits, in part, for the approval of the $700,000 grant. The Immigrant Development Center and the MMCDC raised the rest of the money through donations and other grants.

“Now the real work starts. It started with a vision and here we are at the point where we can really get it done,” Mahli said. “We have the finances. We have a site identified and businesses identified.”

Adde received 28 letters of interest to fill the 12 proposed spaces. She will work with the Immigrant Development Center to train the entrepreneurs interested in opening businesses.

“[The center] has to make the hard decision of who to give to and who to not,” Adde said. “We have to train them, and through the training we will have to sort it out.”

A committee will decide which business owners will receive a spot in the new market.

“I think it’s going to be an incubator for new businesses, and some people might expand and move beyond the market, others may not,” Fundingsland said.

Interviews with architecture firms to finalize building plans are expected to take place before the Jan. 1, and building on the project will start no later than May, according to Fundingsland.

Adde continues to meet with planners and prospective business owners to finalize the plans for the international market. The mother of five young children juggles the meetings between picking her kids up from school and driving them to their various after-school programs.

“I have the resources to do that and there are people who don’t, so I’m very lucky,” Adde said. “We come in(to) life to give back and leave something for your community and your children and that’s what I go by. I see a good, bright future for them in our future here the Fargo-Moorhead area.”