Tuesday, May 26, 2026

Downtown Cleveland: experience drives perception

Want to love Downtown Cleveland more? Spend more time experiencing more of it,
says Downtown Cleveland Inc. (NEOtrans). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.

Downtown Cleveland, Inc. (DCI) says that the biggest thing wrong with the city’s central business district is that not enough people are familiar with it. If more people visited it more often, DCI said people would enjoy it more. And DCI has a survey of perceptions to back up its argument.

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Monday, May 25, 2026

Edgewater, West Blvd grapple with new development

Looking south across a basketball court at Cudell Commons, construction of Marion C. Selzter
Elementary School moves ahead (Harrison Whittaker). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.

Cleveland’s Edgewater, Cudell, and West Boulevard neighborhoods are currently facing a small wave of development, ranging from renovations to new construction. But the path to groundbreaking has been easier for some projects than others.

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Saturday, May 23, 2026

AmTrust to put $14M in downtown offices

As previously reported by NEOtrans, AmTrust will split up its office presence
in Greater Cleveland. Its downtown offices will move to the AECOM
Building seen here where it make a large investment to update
and enhance its space (Google). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.

Even as AmTrust takes steps to divide up its Downtown Cleveland offices into suburban and downtown locations, the financial services company is about to make a major investment into its new downtown offices at the AECOM Building, 1300 E. 9th St., according to plans filed with the city this week.

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Friday, May 22, 2026

Cleveland housing developments get funded, neighborhoods lifted

 With a working title of the Lorain Avenue Redevelopment, a new
building offering affordable housing atop a new office for Ohio City Inc.
will replace the aging, nearly vacant McCafferty Health Center, providing
more housing choices in a neighborhood with high rents (City Architecture).
CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.

Three Cleveland developments won competitive, highly coveted tax credits that will help push each of those new housing projects toward construction. In total, the trio will add 165 affordable residential units. But one of them is actually the construction of 40 new houses that offer an opportunity at home ownership.

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Thursday, May 21, 2026

Lakefront apartment complex wins financing

Union at Cleveland Harbor would offer affordable housing along Cleveland’s
Lakefront, near the East 55th Street marina and Gordon Park (RDL).
CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM. 

Despite having 17 miles of shoreline, developments along Cleveland’s Lake Erie waterfront don’t happen that often due to a lack of developable land. But one got closer to construction today after financing for it was approved by the state, according to a press release.

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Naia Noir tops Detroit-Shoreway developments

Cuyahoga County’s first lakefront high-rise in over 50 years has risen to
more than half of its planned height beside J Roc-developed The Shore-
way (Harrison Whittaker). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.

In March, NEOtrans announced that Cuyahoga County’s first lakefront high-rise in over half a century had begun construction next to Edgewater Park. The apartment tower, branded Naia Noir, will also be the first high-rise constructed in Cleveland’s Detroit-Shoreway neighborhood.

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Wednesday, May 20, 2026

Music Institute dorm starts on bad note

Classrooms, offices and a dormitory for the Cleveland Institute of
Music as well for Case Western Reserve University students is at 1609 Hazel
Dr. in Cleveland’s University Circle. But the southern and, to the right in this
September 2022 streetview, western exterior wall panels will have to be
replaced due to “defective workmanship” according
to a pending legal
complaint (Google). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.

Less than six years old, the Cleveland Institute of Music’s (CIM) new building called 1609 Hazel at its namesake address in Cleveland’s University Circle, has suffered extensive water damage due to alleged poor construction. And the bill for pending repairs just came in — $1.7 million, according to public records filed with the city.

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Tuesday, May 19, 2026

Cleveland Trades Council urges data center regulations, not ban

Data centers are growing in number while many office buildings are fading.
In Downtown Cleveland, the Sterling Building on Euclid Avenue has become
a 250,000-square-foot hub for technology, cloud computing and cybersecurity
services (LoopNet). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.

As Cleveland considers a moratorium on the addition of new data centers until it can update its zoning code to better address them, and as a statewide ban on larger data centers is pending, the Cleveland Building and Construction Trades Council said it wants the emotion taken out of the debate.

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Monday, May 18, 2026

City loses another fight against spread of downtown parking lots

On the south side of Sumner Avenue, next to St. Maron Church at left, is a piece of the land
the church’s diocese just acquired to provide parking for the church and to earn revenue
from visitors to the Gateway sports and entertainment complex visible at right (Google).
CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.

An historic church in Downtown Cleveland’s Gateway District won its case before the city’s Board of Zoning Appeals (BZA) today to use a newly purchased property at 1212-1260 Sumner Ave. as a surface parking lot for up to 90 vehicles.

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Saturday, May 16, 2026

Cuyahoga gets its $1M brownfield allocation

A week before Christmas, the West Side Market was the site of a press conference in
which it was awarded a $5 million Ohio Historic Preservation Tax Credit to support
renovations totaling more than $71.33 million. Yesterday, it got an Ohio Brownfield
grant to do site work to prepare for those renovations (NEOtrans).
CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.

Although each county in Ohio was limited to $1 million in Ohio Brownfield Remediation grants in this round of funding awards, Cuyahoga County made the most of it despite its voracious appetite for such grants as it repositions its former, massive industrial base in the post-industrial era.

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Friday, May 15, 2026

Cleveland’s proposed Data Center moratorium in a race against time, technology

As more companies embrace artificial intelligence to automate more jobs, more data centers
will appear around the world. The question Cleveland is grappling with as more data center
development plans arrive here is to how to effectively regulate them (NEOtrans).
CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.

It’s a race against time between the City of Cleveland and developers seeking to construct new data centers. On one side is the city which has an outdated zoning code it has been wanting to update for years, with data centers being the latest new land use to add to the mix.

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Thursday, May 14, 2026

Data center rejection prompts reaction

A three-building data center campus is planned in Cleveland’s Slavic Village and could
look like this unofficial rendering created by NEOtrans. The developer, Lakeland Equity
Group, said it spend heavily to add electric grid infrastructure to accommodate the
facility (NEOtrans/ChatGPT). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.

Today’s sudden rejection of a building application for a new $1.6 billion data center in Cleveland’s Slavic Village caught the project’s development team by surprise. But city sources and records revealed the application was rejected because it was incomplete.

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Tremont, Duck Island developments near completion

Two single-family homes designed by AODK are under construction at the Carter Road
Subdivision, where Scranton Peninsula meets Duck Island in Cleveland (Harrison
Whittaker). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.

Cleveland’s Tremont neighborhood is one of the most desirable in the city — and its tight housing market reflects that. But with a handful of developments now wrapping up, it may be the perfect time for those considering a move to the area.

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Wednesday, May 13, 2026

Midline redevelopment district announced

Officials gathered today to announce the Midline Priority Investment Area, a major rede-
velopment initiative of Cleveland’s near-East Side, amid the backdrop of old, decayed
industrial sites that will be razed to make way for new jobs and opportunity (NEOtrans).
CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.

Cleveland’s largest industrial redevelopment in its history, dubbed the Midline Priority Investment Area, was announced today as an effort to transform the city’s near-East Side into a job hub and community greenway.

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Tuesday, May 12, 2026

The Vibe financing OK’d, Fall start ID’d

The six-story Hanover House and the lobby for The Vibe development are seen here
next to the Ohio City Firehouse in Cleveland’s Hingetown enclave (Vocon).
CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.

With financing approved, the developer of Ohio City’s largest new-construction project in four years has an eye toward fall for a groundbreaking date of The Vibe, 2828 Clinton Ave., in Cleveland’s Hingetown enclave.

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Monday, May 11, 2026

CSU’s Woodling transformation may hit $60M

From the outside, the 1970s windowless bunker Woodling Gym is unidentifiable. It’s doubtful
that anyone who hasn’t attended or competed against Cleveland State University would know
where it is. But this view of Woodling, from between Chester and Euclid Avenues looking
west towards the 1970s iconic Rhodes Tower, provides some orientation (Google).
CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.

A request from Cleveland State University (CSU) has gone out in search of qualified design teams to transform the 53-year-old Woodling Gymnasium, 2420 Chester Ave., into a modern, competitive facility. The request notes that the project budget for Woodling’s transformation could range from $30 million to $60 million.

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Sunday, May 10, 2026

Music Settlement breaks ground on $12M expansion

This rendering illustrates the south façade of the planned Mandel Music House. Its design
was revised to use a lighter color to visually transition between the addition and a historic
home (Perspectus). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.

On Friday, The Music Settlement (TMS) held an official groundbreaking for a $12 million expansion of its campus in University Circle. The project will restore and expand the historic Gries House, 1560 Mistletoe Dr., into the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Music House.

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Next TOD project planned on Red Line

The Lorain West Apartments are proposed to be located on its namesake street near the
Lorain-West 65th Red Line rail station. (RDL). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.

One by one, the many used-car dealerships along Lorain Avenue on Cleveland’s West Side are going away. For the most part, they are getting replaced with new multifamily housing developments and that’s what’s proposed to happen again.

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Saturday, May 9, 2026

St. Luke’s Church begins interior demo at Memphis & Pearl

At Memphis Avenue and Pearl Road, the demolition of two historic commercial buildings could
make way for a mixed-use development featuring 84 apartments over ground-level retail
(Harrison Whittaker). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.

At the center of Cleveland’s Old Brooklyn neighborhood, $2.34 million in interior demolition work is set to begin for Memphis & Pearl — a $42.3 million mixed-use development that could add 84 apartments next to retail uses in a renovated St. Luke’s Church.

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Part 2: The Yellow Brick Road of Cleveland’s East Side

A significant research laboratory is planned by the Cleveland Clinic and other partners at the
southeast corner of Opportunity Corridor Boulevard and East 79th Street where a fading
neighborhood stood until recently. At left is the elevated Norfolk Southern railroad, along-
side which the East Side Trail is proposed. This is an unofficial rendering but is based
on conceptual parameters for the project (Google/ChatGPT/NEOtrans).
CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.

Elton John once sang “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” when his songwriter Bernie Taupin bid adieu to city living in his ambitious, fast life, trading it for the quiet lifestyle of tending to a rural farm. Cleveland is heading in the opposite direction by welcoming the start of a new journey.

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