Rents, tours announced for Ohio's tallest residential tower

The Lumen, now without its construction
crane, looks almost complete from the out-
side as it towers over Euclid Avenue and Play-
house Square. A screen and a storefront will
be added to the facade of The Lumen's park-
ing garage at right (Clifton Haworth).
CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE

The construction crane for The Lumen apartment tower in Cleveland's Playhouse Square (PHS) came down last month as the skyscraper topped out. Starting next month, the curtain goes up for the marketing and leasing of Ohio's tallest residential tower.

Preliminary rents for 318-unit building were released via Apartments.com this week and public hard-hat tours of the 34-story, 396-foot-tall skyscraper start next week, with the first few tours already sold out. A temporary leasing office for The Lumen was opened at 1501 Euclid Ave., Suite 112, across the street from the tower that's located at 1600 Euclid.

The tours start March 3 and end July 21. They are offered Mondays through Thursdays most weeks. Each date sells out when the total number of people on each tour date reaches 10 persons. Participants will wear hard hats as The Lumen is still an active construction site until the latter half of the year, although residents may start moving in starting this summer.

People can book their hard-hat tours via this Eventbrite page.

Meanwhile, preliminary rents for The Lumen became known when a listing page for the building was published at Apartments.com. However, The Lumen doesn't yet show up on Apartment.com's map or on other popular sites like Rent.com or Zillow.com. The rents aren't yet published on PHS's web page about The Lumen.

Although a new site for The Lumen is scheduled to go live this week, a Lumen Web site produced by Greystar Worldwide, LLC is already live. PHS Foundation hired Greystar to provide leasing and management functions for the apartment tower.

Downtown Cleveland's three tallest apartment towers are in
this January photo -- sort of. In the distance at center is The
Lumen. To the right of it is The 9. And the photo was taken
from the residents-only rooftop amenity deck atop The
Beacon apartment tower (Matthew Sexton).

"Next week our Web site is launching and we will begin our pre-leasing," said Matt McClung, senior community manager at Greystar for The Lumen.

Apartment.com's information shows that most one-bedroom, one-bathroom apartments measuring from 601 to 912 square feet would rent in the $1,525 to $2,143 range. That's a price per square foot of $2.35 to $2.54.

Similarly, two-bedroom, two-bath apartments measuring from 1,113 to 1,236 square feet may be offered in the $2,572 to $2700 range. That means they could rent anywhere from $2.18 to $2.31 per square foot.

"Those prices are close to accurate," McClung said. "I think those prices got published by Apartments.com before we finalized prices."

There are six penthouse units in The Lumen measuring 1,211 to 1,932 square feet with rents within a few pennies of $3.80 per square foot, according to Apartment.com.

Those preliminary figures put The Lumen's rents in the ballpark with The Beacon's, a 28-story, 350-foot-tall tower that officially opened in November 2019. The Beacon, at 515 Euclid, was the first new-construction, 20-plus-story apartment tower to open downtown since the twin 23-story Park Centre (now Reserve Square) towers were built in 1969, according to Clevelandskyscrapers.com.

Apartment.com listing for The Lumen.

The Beacon's Web site shows one-bedroom, one-bath apartments measuring 800 to 1,031 square feet with prices in the $2,175-$3,524 range. That works out to $2.11 to $4.41 per square foot. Two-bedroom, two-bath apartments in The Beacon, measuring 1,164 to 1,498 square feet and priced from $2,674 to $5,193. That's a price per square foot of $2.30 to $4.04.

As of last week, salespersons at The Beacon say the building is about 50 percent leased despite it having among the highest rents downtown and it being available for occupancy for less than a year. That bodes very well for The Lumen.

One of the first apartment towers downtown to crack the $2 per square foot threshold was The 9, 2017 E. 9th St. Although The 9 opened in 2015, the 29-story, 383-foot-tall tower was built in 1971 as the headquarters for the Cleveland Trust Co., later Ameritrust. As an apartment building, it leased out in about a year. Its success aided the development of the Beacon and Lumen, according to real estate insiders.

The Lumen was built on a surface parking lot at the corner of Euclid and East 17th Street. Surface parking lots in downtown Cleveland are increasingly being targeted for significant developments including the new Sherwin-Williams headquarters, the City Club Apartments tower and more.

Another parking lot could be eliminated if The Lumen leases at a pace that meets or exceeds expectations of PHS Foundation officials. Two sources say PHS officials are considering building a second apartment tower on land owned by the foundation at the southeast corner of East 13th Street and Chester Avenue -- if The Lumen is a commercial success.

But Cindi Szymanski, assistant director brand marketing and communications at PHS disputed that rumor.

"There is absolutely no truth to the rumor you mentioned," she said.

PHS officials have said that increasing the number of residents in the theater district will make it a vibrant, 24-hour neighborhood, increase economic vitality and foster a stronger destination in the heart of the city. These real estate investments also build a working endowment to help secure the future of PHS's eight theaters.

END