As the old saying goes, “Show me your budget — I will tell you what you value.” Along those same lines, if you want to know what Cleveland city officials vs. the owners of the Cleveland Browns want from their returns on investment in the lakefront, show me your actions, not your words.
Thursday, May 9, 2024
Wednesday, May 8, 2024
Ohio City is first site for Whalen’s new venture
What does a quarterback like to do? Run a winning team and call his own plays. With that, Cleveland-area native and former pro football quarterback Dan Whalen is taking the snap from center this week and launching his own real estate development and investment firm — Places Development. Not only is the new firm based in Cleveland, Whalen said much of his business focus will be on Cleveland.
CSU students: Here’s how to get the Waterfront Line on track…
When a group of 16 urban planning graduate students from Cleveland State University (CSU) took a critical look at the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority’s (GCRTA) light-rail Waterfront Line, they unsurprisingly found a number of things lacking. But there were some surprises discovered during their research that could boost ridership if addressed effectively.
Tuesday, May 7, 2024
Bridgeworks eyes late-summer groundbreaking
A representative of a development partnership told the city’s Board of Zoning Appeals (BZA) yesterday that the long-awaited Bridgeworks development in Cleveland’s Ohio City’s neighborhood could “hopefully” see a groundbreaking ceremony by late summer. But there are still a few more hurdles to clear before that happens, including an appearance before the city’s Landmarks Commission in the coming weeks.
Monday, May 6, 2024
Cleveland: a target of rail competitors?
Last week, two things happened in the rail world that are probably related. They have been brewing in the background for a while, but they finally appeared in public almost simultaneously. Federal corporation Amtrak and private-sector company Brightline showed their hands that they may compete for Ohio passenger rail expansions and real estate developments. And Cleveland may end up the winner.
Thursday, May 2, 2024
Growing industry moving to Cleveland
Along a Cleveland street known historically for dumping everything from trash to murder victims, a long-neglected property is about to gain something almost priceless — a future. On Train Avenue in the city’s Clark-Fulton neighborhood, a truck terminal turned junk yard, infested with weeds, littered with abandoned vehicles and tagged with graffiti, is due to be replaced by a growing glass-glazing business and nearly 20 jobs from the suburbs.
Wednesday, May 1, 2024
Brook Park stadium rendering confirmed real
NEOtrans has secured a copy of a rendering showing the proposed multipurpose domed stadium sought by the owner of the Cleveland Browns football team in the Cleveland suburb of Brook Park. NEOtrans has confirmed from two of its best stadium sources that the rendering is real. The sources were upset at whoever leaked the rendering.
Tuesday, April 30, 2024
PearlBrook’s ex-Peaches/Federal store to become RISE Dispensary
Here comes another change to the PearlBrook Shopping Center at the northwest corner of Pearl and Brookpark roads in Cleveland’s Old Brooklyn neighborhood. Plans were submitted to the city last week for a new RISE Dispensary of medical cannabis to be located in a building at 5100 Pearl Rd. that was built for a Federal Department Store and later became a Peaches Records & Tapes store.
Monday, April 29, 2024
Browns want 50/50 public/private cost-sharing for either stadium site
When Cleveland Browns representatives last week showed state lawmakers designs for optional stadiums in Downtown Cleveland or in suburban Brook Park, they also shared something else — a proposed public-private cost sharing arrangement.
Friday, April 26, 2024
Irishtown Bend work to barge in on river traffic
In the coming weeks, the U.S. Coast Guard is expected to establish safety zone requirements for the barge-based installation of steel-wall bulkheads along the edge of the Cuyahoga River at Irishtown Bend in Cleveland. Those requirements will likely result in the daily closure of the river channel to commercial shipping for hours at a time but leisure and recreational boating is not expected to be significantly affected.
Amtrak seeks $300m for Great Lakes-area stations
Cleveland and other Northern Ohio cities would gain new, larger train stations from a program proposed by passenger railroad Amtrak to improve its intercity services here. The program, a five-year, $300 million Great Lakes Stations Improvement initiative, represents the first time in Amtrak’s 53-year history that it has pursued such an aggressive development effort for this region and specifically for the Cleveland-Chicago route.
Thursday, April 25, 2024
Downtown’s new AJ Rocco’s reopening in May
If you remember AJ Rocco’s as a coffee shop in the neighboring Caxton Building in Downtown Cleveland, the new AJ Rocco’s is going to be a big change for you. Restaurant-bar owner Brendan Walton and building owner Paul Shaia spared no expense in renovating a 19th-century bank building at 828 Huron Rd. to its Gilded Age glory with all of the rich woodwork, brick walls and metal decorative elements one would expect in a cozy downtown pub.
Wednesday, April 24, 2024
Cleveland’s Central-Fairfax: the next hot zone?
Cleveland’s Central and Fairfax neighborhoods haven’t been a hot zone for new real estate development since the Jazz Age of the 1920s and 30s. Back then, streets like Cedar, Central and Quincy were hopping with jazz clubs, speakeasies, flappers and gangsters. Aside the many night spots were factories that hummed with tens of thousands of jobs during the daytime hours. Most were tightly clustered along the four-tracked Pennsylvania Railroad that was elevated in 1915 to reduce traffic congestion.
Tuesday, April 23, 2024
Downtown’s next crane may be MIA for a while
While the nation’s employment is high and incomes are rising, in many respects, the slowdown in new real estate construction projects is the worst the nation has seen since the credit crunch of 2008-10. Back then, everything stopped. Nothing new was getting built. Things aren’t too different now unless you’re building new data centers, warehouses or small housing projects.
Monday, April 22, 2024
New Downtown Lakewood plan, grocery store announced
Sitting dormant since Lakewood Hospital was closed in 2016 and demolished in 2019, a 6-acre city-owned site in Downtown Lakewood has a fresh strategy and a new tenant to potentially and finally reactivate it. While that strategy and a new tenant, a neighborhood grocery store, was enthusiastically received by City Council members at a committee meeting tonight, it remains to be seen whether it can overcome financing hurdles affecting it and all other projects nationwide.
Tower City’s Astro lifts off tomorrow
Yes, a new restaurant at Tower City Center in Downtown Cleveland really is out of this world. And The Astro Restaurant is going to lift off at 11 a.m. tomorrow, one block from the neighboring RocketMortage offices. But since the restaurant will be open only for dinner, it may prove to be popular for people attending evening events at the RocketMortgage FieldHouse just down the street.
Friday, April 19, 2024
Sherwin-Williams: already outgrown its new HQ
With the completion of Sherwin-Williams’ new Downtown Cleveland headquarters tower delayed well into next year, the global coatings giant has a some extra time to consider its options on how to handle various aspects of its unanticipated growth. Since the company has already outgrown its new HQ before it is finished, that means weighing a second HQ tower, expanding remote work, as well as addressing parking and commuting options.
Thursday, April 18, 2024
Cleveland Museum of Art’s $8M lobby reno starts May 1
Increasingly crowded with students, tour groups and attendees of special events, three lobbies at Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) are about to be renovated thanks to $8 million worth of donations. Those gifts will help make those gathering locations in one of Cleveland’s most popular museums a place to enjoy rather than deal with.
Downtown: Huron may close for street market
Although early in the process, Playhouse Square Foundation is leading an effort in Downtown Cleveland that could result in the closure of Huron Road to vehicles. The goal is to effectively expand US Bank Plaza and create a venue for a street market of pop-up vendors and artists. The potential closure to cars and trucks could affect a short stretch of Huron that’s closest to Euclid Avenue.
Progressive Insurance puts offices up for sale
Although the global insurance provider cautioned that this day was coming, it doesn’t make its arrival any easier. Mayfield Village-based Progressive Insurance has announced that it will offer for sale millions of square feet of office space here in Greater Cleveland and around the country. This comes at a time when nearly every office-based employer is shedding office space in favor of remote work, too.
Wednesday, April 17, 2024
Superman statue, creators’ tribute plaza near to landing in Downtown Cleveland
There’s lots of stoic statues around downtown honoring Clevelanders and others who helped make the city and the United States great during their lives. But there could soon be a new statue and plaza downtown for a man who never lived at all except in comic books, on television and in movies. The statue of Superman is as much about honoring two men who did live — native Clevelanders Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster who created one of America’s first and most beloved superheroes.
Rocky River apartments to open May 1
In recent years, Cleveland-based Krueger Group has been busily adding new apartments in Cleveland’s hottest neighborhoods in the urban core. But on May 1, they and partner RHM Real Estate Group of Lyndhurst are due to open ORRIS, 22655 Center Ridge Rd., the first new apartment building in suburban Rocky River in a decade.
Tuesday, April 16, 2024
Renovated Odeon in Flats to reopen this year
With a new owner, a new venue manager and some freshening up planned in the coming months, The Odeon Concert Club, 1295 Old River Rd. on the East Bank of Cleveland’s Flats, is due to begin hosting new live performances again, perhaps before the end of this summer.
Monday, April 15, 2024
Park Place Tech seals HQ deal
After a year-long search for a new headquarters, Park Place Technologies has closed on its deal to acquire Progressive Direct Insurance’s Alpha Campus in Highland Heights. Consummation of the purchase agreement sets the stage for renovating the multi-building campus and ultimately relocating to it 500 headquarters employees from neighboring Mayfield Heights. Warehouse operations in Solon will also be consolidated on the new site.
Sunday, April 14, 2024
Phase 2 awaits: Innovation Square, Fairfax Market
Two mixed-market-rate apartment developments that just opened along East 105th Street in Cleveland’s Fairfax neighborhood have phase-two projects proposed. But construction on the pair of follow-on projects may not occur for a year or more as lending remains tight and leasing activity has been uneven. But things could accelerate next year after interest rates fall and hiring starts for thousands of permanent jobs at several large Cleveland Clinic buildings under construction nearby.
Friday, April 12, 2024
Cleveland’s Greyhound/Barons Bus station futures
Thursday, April 11, 2024
Fairview Hospital unveils North Campus options
At a community meeting this evening at Fairview Hospital, Cleveland Clinic Foundation officials showed five design options for developing a new clinical building containing the Moll Cancer Center and medical offices plus a new parking garage on Fairview Hospital’s North Campus, north of Lorain Avenue. While there were some variations in the scale and shaping of the clinical building, the greatest difference between the options was where and how to construct a new parking garage or three.
Tuesday, April 9, 2024
Rezoning recommended for Ohio City project
In February 2023, the first of many public meetings were held for a medium-sized development called 45 West proposed by Cleveland-based My Place Group on Lorain Avenue at West 45th Street in Cleveland’s Ohio City neighborhood. More than a year later, a rezoning request was recommended by the City Planning Commission to City Council to allow the project to move forward.
Monday, April 8, 2024
Cleveland skyscraper’s new owner plans upgrades
Purchase of Downtown Cleveland’s third-tallest skyscraper last week was officially confirmed today by the skyscraper’s new owner. A partnership of Namdar Realty Group and Mason Asset Management, both of Long Island, NY, also said they have a formed a five-year capital plan to improve 200 Public Square and hired a new building manager to carry out that plan. Enhancing the retail offerings in the tower’s atrium for office tenants and nearby residential buildings is part of its goal.
Sunday, April 7, 2024
County courthouse to have new address?
A Cuyahoga County committee has reportedly rejected all but one of the proposals that could have kept a Consolidated Courthouse at the current site of Downtown Cleveland’s existing Justice Center. NEOtrans has learned that, of the four surviving proposals, one involves a complicated, time-consuming double-move of courthouse functions from the current site and back again. If rejected, it would end a five-decade run of the Justice Center site as a law enforcement, adjudication and penal facility and set the stage for its redevelopment.
Friday, April 5, 2024
Playhouse Square arrives at Greyhound Station
Playhouse Square Foundation this week closed a deal to acquire the Greyhound station in Downtown Cleveland to expand the theater district northward and convert the station into an entertainment/dining venue, according to a source familiar with the transaction. While Playhouse Square officials were mum on their plans, a spokesperson told NEOtrans that Greyhound bus operations will be relocated on a schedule that works for them and their customers.
Cleveland planners OK 150-foot-tall billboard in Flats
Cleveland City Planning Commission today approved placing a 150-foot-tall pole-mounted billboard at a Flats East Bank property owned by an affiliate of controversial local businessman Tony George. It is the second of three billboards that George has received city permission to build in order to fulfill a court-approved settlement prior to demolishing an oft-vandalized building for the Irishtown Bend Park in Ohio City.
Thursday, April 4, 2024
Ohio City retail defies recent trends
This spring, the flowers aren’t the only things blooming in Cleveland’s Ohio City neighborhood. So are the new stores and plans for more, including restaurants and cafes. While many new and renovated buildings have opened elsewhere in the city, their ground-floor retail spaces tend to fill with a pre-programmed routine of bank branches, coffee shops, the occasional bar/restaurant, art gallery, or stay empty for a long time.
Wednesday, April 3, 2024
Lorain Road corridor wins transit planning grant
In a continuing effort to create more affordable housing and transportation choices for Americans, the Biden-Harris Administration and the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Transit Administration (FTA) yesterday announced $17.6 million in grants going to 20 communities in 16 states to support equitable Transit-Oriented Development (TOD). Greater Cleveland was among those communities.
Monday, April 1, 2024
Lake Erie island stadium concept floated
Borrowing on the 1970s plan for a Lake Erie jetport, NEOtrans has learned that a $10 billion stadium concept considered for professional football in Cleveland could involve an off-shore site as well as its island gaining potential sovereign status and inclusion in a longstanding free trade program with the USA and potentially Canada.
Saturday, March 30, 2024
Three redevelopments to boost Cleveland’s Lee-Harvard
Three large redevelopment sites totaling nearly 20 acres on Cleveland’s Lee-Harvard neighborhood are the subject of city efforts to focus investment on them. The effort is intended to reverse decades of disinvestment that has occurred in Cleveland’s southeast side by producing jobs, new housing and catalyzing more investment. In fact, there’s some evidence that such a reversal is already underway.
Friday, March 29, 2024
Ohio City megaproject nearly ready for roll-out
As early as next month, plans may go public for a significant mixed-use development on the largest undeveloped site in Cleveland’s booming Ohio City neighborhood. Sources familiar with the project said the release of plans for the development, first confirmed by NEOtrans in October 2023, was delayed as the development team attempted to include a well-known property but will instead move forward without it.
Wednesday, March 27, 2024
Sherwin-Williams HQ delayed into 2025
Sherwin-Williams’ headquarters construction management team had hoped to enclose its new 616-foot-tall office tower in Downtown Cleveland by spring. But with April right around the corner, the building has not yet reached that milestone. While delays are happening to a lot of building projects due to supply constraints, Sherwin-Williams has made sure its employees won’t be left out in the cold.
Tuesday, March 26, 2024
New Downtown Cleveland Clinic, Cavs center to see groundbreaking by year’s end
Today, the Cleveland Cavaliers, Cleveland Clinic and Bedrock Real Estate revealed the first official renderings of the Cleveland Clinic Global Peak Performance Center. Pending city approvals, groundbreaking on the Cleveland Clinic Global Peak Performance Center is anticipated before the end of 2024.
Browns stadium likely going to Brook Park, if…
NEOtrans has learned that the Cleveland Browns and their owners, the Haslam Sports Group, want several things from their stadium over the next 30 years that the City of Cleveland appears unwilling to give them. That includes a dome that adds another $1 billion-plus to the stadium’s cost and control over revenues from parking and a ballpark village development.
Monday, March 25, 2024
Cleveland Public Square’s continuing transformation
Construction started today on the Group Plan Commission’s Superior Crossing Project with a ceremonial farewell to the unpopular and infamous concrete barriers that have stood on Public Square since its major reconstruction eight years ago. But for the next three months, that means some traffic reroutes, bus detours and transit stop relocations to learn.
Sunday, March 24, 2024
One downtown garage down, more to go?
It’s a tough time for Downtown Cleveland parking garages built in the 1950s and 1960s. Three of them in particular, each with just over 300 parking spaces or 966 total, are having a rough go of it. One already was demolished. Two others were closed due to their worsening condition. Many other downtown garages are of a similar age and may face financial and structural uncertainty in a weak office market.
Friday, March 22, 2024
One Hulett may be saved — in Canton
Where once there was four Hulett Ore Unloaders, soon there will be none. But at least one of the massive, dinosaur-like machines that revolutionized the steel industry and Great Lakes shipping through high-volume efficiency, now has a chance to survive extinction.
It’s official: Board of Elections to ex-Plain Dealer building
Confirming news first reported here at NEOtrans two weeks ago, Cuyahoga County Executive Chris Ronayne informed county staff that he will introduce plans to Cuyahoga County Council on Tuesday to lease the former Plain Dealer building downtown for the new Board of Elections (BOE) offices. In a memo circulated today to certain county employees, he also outlined plans for additional real estate moves by the county.
Cuyahoga Land Bank gets $10M from Cleveland
Cleveland City Council has awarded $9.9 million of remaining American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds to the Cuyahoga Land Bank to build and renovate homes in three wards that include four historically disinvested neighborhoods including Central, Clark-Fulton, Collinwood and Glenville. The targeted wards are five, 10 and 14.
Thursday, March 21, 2024
Metroparks buying more Cuyahoga Riverfront land
Adding 4.5 acres of land along the Cuyahoga River is a relatively small contribution to the 1,000 acres the Cleveland Metroparks has acquired in just the past three years. But this latest addition may be one of its most visible and strategic. The site the Metroparks is acquiring is located in Cleveland on Whiskey Island, between the river and the park system’s new Wendy Park Bridge.
Wednesday, March 20, 2024
Irishtown Bend Park design features unveiled
Tomorrow, the board of the Cleveland Metroparks is expected to authorize requesting a $10.8 million grant from the state to pay a significant portion of the construction costs of the planned Irishtown Bend Park in Cleveland’s Ohio City neighborhood. The proposed improvements and their projected costs are based on designs that were released today.
Tuesday, March 19, 2024
Cleveland suburban office market ‘bloodbath’
The numbers are downright ugly. High office vacancy rates and even higher availability rates exceeding 20 percent owing to a big jump in office spaces available for sub-lease. Numerous Class A office buildings are for sale with few if any interested buyers. For those in a buying mood, their lowball interest may be only for the land to hold for a possible conversion to new uses or for the hopes that better days may return to the office market — someday.
Monday, March 18, 2024
Downtown Cleveland’s recovery accelerated in 2023
In a data-heavy report released today, Downtown Cleveland, Inc. (DCI) outlined its achievements in continuing the recovery of Cleveland’s business and hospitality center and one of Cuyahoga County’s fastest-growing residential areas. The data, contained in the 2023 Downtown Cleveland Economic Development Report, says the recovery of Cleveland’s central business district is outpacing that of its peer cities in Ohio and the Great Lakes region.
Sunday, March 17, 2024
Flats On Pearl OK’d, Row On Garden tabled
A next step for developer Kostas Almiroudis went forward when the Cleveland Landmarks Commission approved plans for the mixed-use Flats On Pearl. But the commission didn’t take as many steps forward as Almiroudis wanted, in requesting the demolition of four neighboring, decayed houses and a small townhouse development that would replace them.