Next-gen IKEA store coming to Greater Cleveland

The former Dick’s Sporting Goods at Crocker Park in Westlake will be remodeled as a small-
format IKEA store — Greater Cleveland’s first such location for the global retailer. This is an
unofficial rendering of what the renovated store could look like (NEOtrans).
CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.

In 2018, IKEA walked away from Cleveland after the search for a buildable site fell through. Nearly a decade later, the Swedish home and furniture supplier will return with a brand-new concept for Northeast Ohio.

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Ohio City awaits new apartments, retail

Dan Whalen led the development of Intro Cleveland, at far left, as part of Harbor Bay Ventures.
While that building opened in 2022 with top-of-the-market rents, Whalen’s and Luke Palmisano’s
Ambler apartments, at right, is expected to lease at more competitive rates (Harrison Whittaker).
CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.

While numerous Ohio City developments are transforming historic buildings into new sources of activity, the popular Cleveland neighborhood continues to make progress on a series of new construction projects.

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Now arriving at Crocker Park — IKEA

An IKEA small-format store appears to be in the cards for Westlake’s Crocker Park. The
major new tenant for the western-suburban lifestyle center will officially be announced
Tuesday (Ingka Group). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.

For days, Crocker Park’s owner Stark Enterprises has teased the opening of a new tenant at the suburban Westlake lifestyle center. And from all indications, that tenant is a retailer that Cleveland doesn’t yet have. On Tuesday, we’ll all find out for certain.

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Flexjet to add nearly 1,000 jobs

A year after this picture was taken in September 2022, Flexjet officially opened its $50 million
global headquarters at Cuyahoga County Airport in Richmond Heights. The nearly 51,500-
square-foot global operations control center is all glass and acute angles designed to look
like aircraft wings on the outside (Google). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.

Two Northeast Ohio job-creation efforts that could result in 1,100 new jobs locally were supported and rewarded by the Ohio Department of Development today with the announcement of Ohio Job Creation Tax Credits.

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Midtown, Fairfax developments emerge

A 64-unit apartment building developed by Sabor Group USA rises on the west side of East
70th Street near Euclid Avenue (Harrison Whittaker). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.

One of Cleveland’s newest Transit-Oriented Developments (TOD) has largely flown under the radar despite being located just 200 feet from Euclid Avenue and only a 3-minute walk from the nearest HealthLine Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) station. That’s because of its unusual midblock location on East 70th Street.

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East Cleveland celebrates neighborhood investment

At The Elliot, two homes built by Greenlight Building Co. straddle the border of Cleve-
land and East Cleveland (Harrison Whittaker). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.

Stakeholders and community leaders gathered Friday on Woodlawn Avenue to celebrate the completion of the $4.6 million initial phase of the Circle East district — described as a “new 30-acre neighborhood” spanning the cities of Cleveland and East Cleveland, just east of University Circle.

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Huge Unified Operations Center planned for Cleveland Clinic

Seen from Alexander Road, the nearly 250,000-square-foot Cardinal Health distribution center
is big. So is the nearly identical-in-size Great Day Improvements warehouse next door. But
they are smaller, even in total, than the Cleveland Clinic’s Unified Operations Center planned
here at the site of the former Walton Hills Ford plant, now called the Forward Innovation
Center (Google). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.

A development partnership plans to build for Cleveland Clinic a massive Unified Operations Center for 526 new and relocated jobs. The relocated jobs will come from other Clinic facilities in Northeast Ohio to the 111-acre former Ford Stamping Plant in Walton Hills, according to public records.

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Shaker Square development site ID’d

At the southeast corner of Superior Avenue and East 12th Street, in what was the heart of
Cleveland’s office district for half of a century, the new owner of 1100 Superior is trying
to reinvent its property (NEOtrans). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.

After an express car wash withdrew its plans for a new Shaker Square location in response to residents’ protests, the question remains: how can developers navigate neighborhood opposition? For local developer Dan Whalen, the answer is simple — ask the neighbors.

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Downtown tower gives new meaning to ‘mixed use’

At the southeast corner of Superior Avenue and East 12th Street, in what was the heart of
Cleveland’s office district for half of a century, the new owner of 1100 Superior is trying
to reinvent its property (NEOtrans). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.

Some districts offer a mix of uses — residential, commercial or public spaces. Some buildings mix uses within their walls, often retail on the ground floor with residential or offices above. But 1100 Superior is going further — mixing uses on the same floors.

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Cleveland Amphitheater headlines riverfront’s next act

New renderings show the future Cleveland Amphitheater under the watchful eye of
the Lorain-Carnegie Hope Memorial Bridge from which it takes design inspiration
(Bedrock Cleveland, MKSK, DLR Group). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.

Transformational changes are underway on Cleveland’s riverfront and the City Planning Commission will soon get a look at the next major phase of construction. Renderings were released this week of the Cleveland Amphitheater, a new venue that will reinvigorate the industrial Flats into a lively entertainment district.

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Cleveland Clinic’s Main Campus slide puzzle

Puzzles can hinge on one important piece. For the Cleveland Clinic, that piece is this — the
8700 block of Euclid Avenue where the Cleveland Clinic police station at right and the
Mellen Center at left are about to yield to the Clinic’s new Central Utility Plant (Google).
CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.

If you’re a health system earning $18 billion per year and you want to build a new bed tower where your aging Central Utility Plant sets, you move the utility plant. But if the place where you want to build a new utility plant has a police station and a neighboring multiple sclerosis care center, you move those uses, too.

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School buys more development land

The Urban Community School, at left across West 50th Street, acquired 10 parcels
of land at right including several structures along Lorain Avenue (Google).
CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.

At first glance, the property transaction doesn’t stand out. At less than 1 acre of land, it’s not a big piece of land. And the holding company that purchased the land was created with a unremarkable name the day before the deed transfer was signed.

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Buyer interest in 925 Euclid is high

Interest in the 1.45-million-square-foot 925 Euclid Ave. is high among potential buyers of the
property as it is at Millennia Companies which owns the building now and has sought to rede-
velop it as The Centennial (Sandvick). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.

For a large, vacant, old building needing significant repairs before it can even host new occupants in a soft market, there is a healthy amount of interest in buying The Centennial, 925 Euclid Ave. in Downtown Cleveland. The difficulty in redeveloping the building resulted in a lender foreclosing on the property.

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Clark-Fulton, Stockyards rebuild with new infill

A new, replacement Clark PreK-8 School opened last fall on the north side of Clark Avenue,
welcoming students from the now-closed Walton Elementary School (Harrison Whittaker).
CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.

As Ohio City continues to see new construction activity, momentum is edging south into the adjacent Clark-Fulton and Stockyards neighborhoods, where vacant lots are giving way to the types of dense developments that support walkability and transit ridership.

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PNC has big plans for Downtown Cleveland

PNC Center, a 35-story, 46-year-old office tower in Downtown Cleveland is undergoing major
renovations and is activating its four-story annex at left, including adding several ground-floor
retail spaces along Euclid Avenue (NEOtrans). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.

It’s perhaps the best news for Downtown Cleveland’s troubled office market since 2020 when Sherwin-Williams announced it would build a new headquarters here. PNC Bank today confirmed to NEOtrans it will spend big on improving its own skyscraper — including adding new storefronts along Euclid Avenue.

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There is life after foreclosure Downtown

A good story is happening at the Fifth Third Bank tower in Downtown Cleveland after
the property fell into foreclosure under the prior owner. Building improvements and
new tenants are offering a new outlook for the 35-year-old building (LoopNet).
CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.

Fifth Third Bank tower shows there is life after foreclosure. Ownership of the 28-story tower, built in 1991 at 600 Superior Ave. in Downtown Cleveland, transferred in 2024 from Hertz Investment Group to its lender, an affiliate of Prime Group Finance of San Francisco.

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Office market recovery to take ‘years’

The corner of Euclid Avenue and East 9th Street was the heart of Cleveland’s office market. In
the 1980s, nearly 60,000 office jobs were located within two blocks. Today, of the 10 built-as-
office-buildings of eight stories or taller seen here, three are vacant, three others were conver-
ted to residential/hotel uses, and four remain as occupied office buildings. The PNC Bank
Plaza at center is a healthy outlier (NEOtrans). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.

Newmark’s market reports are well-regarded in the real estate industry. Their data is typically dry, yet spot-on. And they almost always avoid drama in their analyses. But their second-quarter 2026 office market report for Greater Cleveland added some unusually colorful adjectives to their data.

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Soccer stadium partners with Rock Entertainment Group

The proposed Cleveland soccer stadium in the Gateway South District offers branding, sponsor-
ship and marketing opportunities that Rock Entertainment Group will help realize (CSG).
CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.

Cleveland Soccer Group (CSG) today announced that Rock Entertainment Group (REG) – the organization behind the Cleveland Cavaliers, Rocket Arena and Cleveland’s incoming WNBA franchise – will lead the naming rights and entitlement sales process for South Gateway Stadium, CSG’s planned 10,000-seat venue on the south side of downtown Cleveland.

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Demolition for Bridgeworks starts

Workers and their heavy equipment began taking down the former Cuyahoga County Engineers’
buildings at the west end of the Detroit-Superior Bridge in Cleveland’s Ohio City neighborhood
(NEOtrans). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.

Demolition crews started working this week to raze the former Cuyahoga County Engineers’ garage and lab complex at the northeast corner of the Detroit-Superior Bridge and West 25th Street for the long-planned, multi-family Bridgeworks development.

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Renovations helping to preserve historic Ohio City

An historic mansion at 3117 Franklin Blvd. is being converted into apartments
as part of the Franklin Yards development (Harrison Whittaker).
CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.

A neglected building can drag down an entire block, but restoring an obsolete structure can do the exact opposite, creating renewed activity that cascades to nearby businesses. In Cleveland’s Ohio City neighborhood, a wave of renovation projects could serve as a model for preserving the city’s dwindling stock of historic buildings.

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