Mid-rise housing on Detroit Ave heads west

This seven-story apartment building is proposed to be built at
4005 Detroit Ave. by Adam Hayoun in Cleveland's Ohio City
neighborhood (LDA).(CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE)

Housing continues to make its inexorable push westward along Detroit Avenue in Cleveland's Ohio City neighborhood. The latest project is 4005 Detroit, a seven-story apartment building with ground-floor retail. Plans for the project were recently submitted to the city for approval.

Proposing the 36-unit residential development is Hayoun Corp. owner Adam Hayoun whose Ohio City resume includes notable historic renovations like the Belden Seymour House, 3805 Franklin Blvd., and the Masters House, 3811 Franklin Blvd. Hayoun is also the principal at ABC Renovation LLC.

In addition to 11 one-bedroom units and 25 two-bedroom units, the proposed apartment building would feature a leasable, 1,318-square-foot retail space and a 605-square-foot lobby fronting Detroit Avenue. It would also have 44 parking spaces on two levels, accessible from Wheat Court, an alley behind the property.

The proposed building is designed to have small frontage on
Detroit Avenue with the structure widening to the south along
the Wheat Court alley (LDA).

Under the corporate name 4007 Detroit, LLC, Hayoun bought the two-parcel, 0.258-acre property for $155,000 in 2016 from David Steinberg, doing business as 4005 Detroit LLC, county records show. The property is located at the western edge of an Opportunity Zone, making it eligible for OZ program equity. A decaying, vacant, 5,602-square-foot warehouse built in 1920 on the site is due to be demolished.

The site is located at the only curve in Detroit Avenue between West 25th and the Cudell neighborhood. It is next to offices for Progressive Urban Real Estate, Blain's Folding Service and Cleveland Bagel.

4005 Detroit Avenue would tower over its one-story neighbors,
but probably not for long. Developers continue to acquire more
properties along the Detroit corridor (LDA).

And while, many real estate insiders have speculated that the spread of high-density housing on Detroit Avenue overlooking Whiskey Island would ultimately force out the growing manufacturing presence of the Kowalski Heat Treating Co., this project shows it would leapfrog it instead. Ironically, 4005 Detroit designer LDA Architects Inc. planned the six-story The Edge apartment building just east of Kowalski.

The project fits in with the citywide 2020 development masterplan's proposed use for this site, which is mixed use/residential. The zoning code allows a 60-foot-tall building to be built here; this building would be 81 feet tall. The gross floor area and minimum setbacks also would require variances from the Board of Zoning Appeals. The building's maximum gross floor area of 49,785 square feet exceeds the 11,237 square feet allowed under the zoning code.

This is the rear of the 4005 and 4007 Detroit Avenue properties
along the Wheat Court alley, as seen in 2016 (Google).

Also, the minimum rear yard setback along the Wheat Court alley is 32 feet, six inches. As proposed, the building has zero setback for the garage and eight feet for the residential part of the structure, according to documents submitted by Hayoun and LDA Architects Inc. to the City Planning Commission.

END

Gordon Park lakefront housing - the sequel

Conceptual renderings show the Shoreline Phase II at East 55th
Street and Interstate 90 would offer views of Lake Erie from
seven sides of its northern frontage. But the building would be
too short to see the downtown Cleveland skyline over its five-
story Phase I next-door neighbor to the west (Vocon).
(CLICK TO ENLARGE IMAGES)

The Gordon Park area on the East Side isn't to be confused with the Gordon Square area on the West Side. Gordon Square is a populous, fast-growing, historic neighborhood. But the lakefront lands along and near Gordon Park could soon add "fast-growing" to its descriptions too, as first reported in a February NEOtrans article.

Now, there's more happening -- a 212-unit, five-story apartment building called The Shoreline Phase II is proposed to be built at 5455 North Marginal Road, according to documents filed with the Cleveland Planning Commission. The four-acre site is on the northwest quadrant of the Interstate 90-East 55th Street interchange. It is located next to the 167-unit The Shoreline apartment building, currently the only housing in the Gordon Park area.

The four-acre patch of grass outlined in red shows the proposed
location of an investor partnership's planned, 212-unit apart-
ment building, just east of downtown Cleveland (Vocon).

The Shoreline Phase II represents an investment of approximately $30 million by a group of investors led by the property's owner Quay 55 East Limited Partnership. An exact investment amount isn't yet known. Mark Coffin, whose name is listed prominently on public records associated with the property and the partnership, has yet to return a phone call seeking more information.

Coffin's firm developed The Shoreline on six acres next door in 2002, back when it was called Quay 55 and had only 138 apartments. This five-story apartment building was originally the four-story Nicholson Terminal building, once a warehouse that received new cars from Detroit by ship. But Coffin defaulted on a $20 million U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development-guaranteed loan.

The five-story Shoreline Phase II western face, as it would
appear to the existing residents of The Shoreline Phase I,
from across an expanded parking lot (Vocon).

The property went through several owners until 2017 when Landmark Lakeshore LLC bought Quay 55, renamed it The Shoreline, and got approval to add 29 apartments to the property by converting indoor parking spaces to housing. That 2018 development represented a new spark of developer interest in the area, fueled by the quick leasing of the added units.

The partnership's 144,016-square-foot second phase includes 160 one-bedroom apartments, 32 studio apartments, and 20 two-bedroom apartments, as well as a new pool and poolhouse to be shared with The Shoreline Phase I. Phase II will add 322 outdoor surface parking spaces and 95 indoor spaces. In Phase I are 63 indoor and 67 outdoor parking spaces. Total parking is proposed to be 561 spaces, planning documents show.

Site plan and parking plan for The Shoreline Phase II shows
the location of a total of 561 existing and planned parking
spaces, as well as the location of the new pool and a new
poolhouse for residents of both phases (Vocon).

It is the second large housing development to be planned within walking distance of Gordon Park this year.

On Feb. 15, B.R. Knez Construction, Inc., DBA Knez Homes, presented conceptual plans to the City Planning Commission to get its feedback before proceeding with more detailed designs for a mixed-use development.

Commission members urged Bo Knez, president and CEO of Knez Homes, to reduce the density of his proposed plan and improve connectivity with "nearby amenities," according to planning staff feedback. The site is at 5700 South Marginal Rd. with two parcels of city-owned land totaling 3.9 acres. In urban development, that is a large canvas.

Knez's concept for a mixed-use development at Interstate 90
and East 55th were not warmly received by the City Planning
Commission which urged Knez to reduce the proposed density
and improve connectivity with nearby amenities (RSA).

On it, Knez says he plans 50-60 townhomes, 90-100 apartments and 8,000 square feet of ground-floor commercial space on the Shoreway side for retail, restaurants or offices. Townhouses would be above the commercial spaces, he said in a phone interview.

Knez, who is a very active developer in Greater Cleveland and especially in the urban core, was born in Slovenia and raised in the East 55th-St. Clair Avenue neighborhood. He said he has wanted to develop near his old neighborhood for some time but the market wasn't right. Now, the market for housing in the Gordon Park area is obviously improving.

END

Old CPD station? New CPD station

Cleveland's historic Central Police Station on Payne Avenue
may become the site of a large, new police headquarters and
storage facility. (Google) CLICK TO ENLARGE IMAGES

Trying to repurpose an existing building in or near downtown Cleveland for the city's new police headquarters was a well-intentioned exercise with a cost-saving goal. Despite it not being fulfilled, the effort may still have a happy ending. The reason is the police department may go back to its old home.

After rejecting two existing buildings downtown, city officials are reportedly interested in locating the new Cleveland Police Department headquarters at the site of the 1937-built Central Police Station, 2001 Payne Ave., according to source who could not speak publicly about the project because he was not authorized to do so.

The new CPD HQ will be a substantial structure, combining about 500,000 square feet of new and renovated offices, storage and parking. No construction cost estimates are available for the now-favored site, but they are likely to be far higher than the $60 million the city figured it would need to buy and modify the ex-Plain Dealer building nearby before that deal died last fall.

The historic Central Police Station was CPD's HQ until 1977 when the department relocated to the Justice Center, 1300 Ontario St. But the old HQ measures about 90,000 square feet -- only half of the 180,000 square feet that CPD needs just for its administrative and operations offices in its new HQ.

Furthermore, the old Central Police Station is being actively used by the Cleveland Police Athletic League and offices for the CPD's Bureau of Community Policing which includes the Neighborhood Watch Program, Auxiliary Police, Citizen's Police Academy and more. Those and other uses may continue to occupy a substantial part of the old police station.

So officials are looking at renovating the old five-story Central Police Station and, behind it, constructing a new office building of about 120,000 to 150,000 square feet. To benefit from outdoor light and to reduce heating, cooling and lightning expenses, open floors with floorplates no more than 30,000 square feet are optimal. That could mean a four- or five-story new-build office building.

Yet that is only part of the picture when it comes to estimating the size of the new CPD HQ. The largest part of the new HQ is the parking and storage -- secure parking for employees and storage/supply of police vehicles, plus public parking. The police garage also requires office space for supportive services. The garage and supportive offices for police vehicles doesn't need to be next to the HQ, but the city considered it desirable.

The now-favored site for the Cleveland
Police Department headquarters, parking
and storage facilities, which could spread
out onto adjacent city lots (Google/KJP).

If all of the uses were stacked in a structure with 30,000-square-foot floorplates, it would be more than 16 stories tall. In reality, the public parking might be split off in a city-owned parking lot on the west side of East 19th Street. That would allow secure employee parking and police vehicle storage and servicing to be in a multi-level garage next to or below a new, consolidated CPD HQ-storage facility.

The city issued a request for proposals (RFP) in early 2017, hoping that owners of downtown buildings would jump at the chance to land a huge tenant like the CPD. But none could meet the city's requirements, including:

• The CPD HQ and police storage/garage facilities should be located east of the Cuyahoga River, west of East 55th Street and north of I-490;
• 180,000 square feet of office space for HQ operations;
• 115,000 square feet of space for storage, garage and supportive offices;
• Secure parking for 400 passenger cars separate from public parking (equal to a 160,000-square-foot parking garage);
• Private elevators and secured stairwells if multiple floors in a shared building;
• Ability to separate staff from the public portions of the operations;
• Ability to install high-technology and work in an efficient, high-quality, healthy environment;
• Occupancy by Dec. 31, 2017 or March 31, 2018 at the latest.

The city's preferences were to find leased space for up to 20 years in an existing or new building near the municipal and county courts as well as the city's Emergency Operations Center at the Justice Center. It preferred lots of public parking, flexible office floor plans, plus back-up communications, power, water and heating systems.

CPD's current home is the eight-floor portion of the Justice
Center on Ontario Street. The city wants out of the aging site
and the county wants to consolidate its offices from nearby
buildings into a single, county-owned structure (Google).

None of those could be found in an existing structure or structures. If the city had begun its search 20 years or even 10 years ago, they might have been able to find a suitable building. Not now. To quote Ian Hunter, "All of the good ones are taken."

And that doesn't even take into account Department of Homeland Security regulations which affect the design of law enforcement facilities, especially the principal offices, employee parking and storage facilities for a major city's police force.

Indeed, those regulations were apparently what doomed the city's signing of a purchase agreement with developer Fred Geis' GLP Superior LTD that owns the former Plain Dealer building, 1801 Superior Ave. It is located a few hundred feet north of the site the city is favoring now.

Homeland Security regulations reportedly prohibit a police station sharing a building with tenants who are not subject to security screening, or possibly even taking over a building whose former tenants didn't screen its visitors. The ex-Plain Dealer building is home to the YMCA of Greater Cleveland, the Council of Economic Opportunities for Greater Cleveland, as well as cleveland.com.

The possibility that Homeland Security regulations doomed the ex-Plain Dealer site was buoyed by the fact that city officials refused to discuss the reasons why the city suddenly backed out of the purchase deal without any prior notice. The city planned to invest $60 million to buy, renovate and modify the ex-Plain Dealer property.

So, between the lack of existing downtown structures with enough suitable space and the complications associated with Homeland Security regulations, the city basically has no choice but to build a new or mostly-new CPD HQ.

Fortunately, the city may already have most of the money it needs to afford a new-build, consolidated CPD HQ-storage facility. Consider that the city received $9.25 million from the sale of its old police HQ. It will also save $5.1 million per year by closing the downtown municipal jail and paying the county to house its prisoners.

That $9.25 million can be part of the down payment for financing a CPD HQ-storage facility, with annual payments of $5 million over 20 years, which is what the city is willing to do, per its RFP (noted above).

At least the city has found a site where it can use an already existing, city-owned building -- a former police station, no less -- and city-owned parking lots to develop its police station of the future. And considering that most of the nearby buildings are pretty short, the new CPD HQ could have a commanding presence on the eastern edge of Cleveland's central business district.

END

University Circle's trio of 11-story developments

Infinium is a 327,000-square-foot development proposed to be
built by The Finch Group on the old Cleveland East site of the
Centers for Dialysis Care, 11717 Euclid Ave. (RDL).
CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE

Three developments featuring 11-story residential buildings are planned to rise in the coming months in Cleveland's University Circle.

The Finch Group is proposing to build a mixed-use project called Infinium on the soon-to-be-vacated site of the Cleveland-East facility for the Centers for Dialysis Care (CDC), 11717 Euclid Ave., according to two sources.

Infinium could rise 11 stories, with the top floor being the second level of a two-story penthouse offering westward views toward downtown Cleveland. The apartment building is proposed to include 133 mixed-income units, many with corner balconies, above a glassy, two-story retail and restaurant atrium facing out toward Euclid Avenue. The mixed-income units suggests that Opportunity Zone equity will be tapped. An outdoor swimming pool is planned on the roof of the retail atrium, according to a project description by RDL Architects.

Along East 117th and 118th streets, 32 townhouses are proposed, concealing an interior parking garage. All told, 165 residences are planned in the tower and among the townhouses. Total square footage of the Uptown-area development is estimated at 327,000 square feet.

Two-acre sites are difficult to come by in densely developed
University Circle. So when the relocation of the Centers for
Dialysis Care became likely, University Circle Inc. sought to
have the vacated site redeveloped with uses that could further
support economic development in the Uptown area (Google).

To make way for the development, CDC is moving its Cleveland-East location into a new, two-story, 48,000-square-foot, $15.5 million facility at the corner of Carnegie Avenue and Stokes Boulevard. It is one of 18 such CDC locations in Greater Cleveland. Construction of the new CDC facility is done, allowing for demolition of the old site.

The old CDC property, totaling 1.9 acres, was acquired by University Circle Inc. (UCI) in 2017 for $3.075 million, according to Cuyahoga County records. A UCI source said the community development corporation anticipates retaining ownership of the property for the foreseeable future. Finch will develop the UCI-owned property.

The same source also said that this project doesn't preclude another development planned by the Finch Group -- Park Lane Condominiums, 10570 Park Lane. Here, Finch plans a skinny condo building with only 18 condos in an 11-story building that carries an estimated price tag of $20 million.

Finch Group's proposed 11-story Park Lane Condominiums,
as seen from the new Nord Family Greenway (Finch).

The tiny site is next to Park Lane Villa, an historic residential hotel Finch renovated as luxury apartments more than a decade ago. Park Lane forms the south side of the $20 million Nord Family Greenway that was completed in 2018.

Finch's Park Lane Condominiums would provide for-sale units on top of a parking garage entrance, between the villa and the 11-story Judson Manor, just north of the massive Circle Square development that's getting under way.

Library Lofts apartments is the second phase of the four-block
Circle Square development. Renovation of the Fenway Manor
apartments at right is first phase. Both are the first steps in the
overall $300 million Circle Square development (MDP).

Orlean Co.'s $16 million renovation of the 13-story, 144-unit Fenway Manor apartments represents the first phase of the Circle Square development. But an 11-story apartment building called Library Lofts would be the first new-construction element of the four-block plan first announced in 2015 by lead developer Midwest Development Partners.

The many new-construction elements of the Circle Square development require significant public sector coordination and sequencing. That includes acquiring and demolishing the old Third District Police Station on Chester Avenue as well as accommodating the relocation of the city's MLK Branch Library into a new home in the development. The old library will be demolished and the site developed with new uses, per the Circle Square vision.

A new Cleveland MLK Branch Library is proposed to be on
the ground floor of the planned Library Lofts, commanding
a street presence on busy Euclid Avenue (SO-IL+Kurtz).

Although it will be built above and next to the new library, the proposed Library Lofts apartment building is being reviewed by the City Planning Commission as a separate project. If approved in the coming weeks, final design will commence soon thereafter and construction could start by year's end.

The Circle Square development, originally called University Circle City Center (dubbed UC3), offers to create a new downtown for Ohio's fourth-largest employment district. Its planned mid-rise buildings, ground-floor retail and civic uses such as the new library are planned to complement the 2018-built, 20-story One University Circle apartment tower and Cleveland Clinic's 1984-built, 16-story W.O. Walker Center -- both across Euclid Avenue from Circle Square.

By the way, readers may ask: Why are 11-story buildings so common in Cleveland? Because in many areas of the city 115 feet (or 11 stories) is the maximum height that a building can be built without having to request a variance from the city's Board of Zoning Appeals. Hopefully, three more 11-story buildings will rise soon in University Circle.

END

Hundreds of apartments planned for Flats' Scranton Peninsula

In what could soon be a similar view on Cleveland's Scranton
Peninsula, NRP Group's Edge 1909 in Pittsburgh's Strip District
has a great view of the Allegheny River, just east of downtown
Pittsburgh (NRP). (CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE)

Sometimes you just never know when the right ingredients will come together to turn what should be a hot development site into a hot development site. Consider Scranton Peninsula -- a post-industrial setting just 1,500 feet as the crow flies from downtown Cleveland's Public Square.

For four decades, not only was the 80-acre Scranton Peninsula a post-industrial scene, it looked like a post-apocalyptic scene with rubble and artifacts left from hosting Republic Steel's massive Bolt & Nut Division, Northern Ohio Lumber Co. and other industrial pillars, some of which date to the early 1800s. Those tenants of Cleveland's hardscrabble past have given way to softwood trees, fescue and other Rust Belt flora among piles of fill dirt, concrete foundations and rusted docks.

Soon, they will give way to Cleveland's future -- a mix of local entrepreneurial and national chain light-industrial, office and retail uses, rental and for-sale housing, plus recreational edges to the lazily flowing waters of the cleaned-up Cuyahoga River. Those are the promised pieces of a 22-acre development called Thunderbird.

One of the biggest new uses to come to Scranton Peninsula appears to be Cleveland-based NRP Group who, according to two sources, has a contract to buy the 7.44 acre Lot A of the Thunderbird development. On it, NRP Group reportedly plans to build about 325 apartments in several buildings about five to six stories tall.

While Clevelanders and Pittsburgers might not want to admit
to it, their cities have a lot in common. One comparison is they
both have navigable rivers that attract real estate development.
Cleveland's Scranton Peninsula could soon offer downtown
and river views like this one, offered by Edge 1909 in the
Steel City's Strip District (NRP).

According to one of the two sources, the development's closest peer project is NRP Group's $60 million Edge 1909 in Pittsburgh's Strip District, 1909 Waterfront Place. That development, which opened in the summer of 2018, has 364 units in several five-story buildings along the Allegheny River. NRP is planning another 443 apartments there by 2021.

As in Pittsburgh, NRP Group may not be the only participant in the Scranton Peninsula development. The actual developer in Pittsburgh is the Buncher Co., which envisions an ambitious Riverfront Landing office and residential development. Edge 1909 is merely a part of that.

Thunderbird is the first comprehensive effort to develop Scranton
Peninsula in more than a century. The extent of vacant land, access
to navigable waterways and proximity to downtown Cleveland and
Ohio City makes this akin to SIM City development (CBRE).

So could it be on Scranton Peninsula. Thunderbird -- a partnership of Fred Geis, East-West Alliance, and J Roc Development -- is an equally ambitious masterplan, maybe more so because the land area is larger and mostly a blank slate. And unlike Pittsburgh's Strip District which has a navigable waterway on only one side, Scranton Peninsula is nearly surrounded by water.

An e-mail to Taylor Brown, president of NRP Construction LLC, seeking additional information for this article was not returned by the close of business May 2. NRP Group, one of the nation's largest apartment developers, recently built The Edison At Gordon Square, whose 306 units quickly leased out. Buoyed by that success, NRP is planning a 323-unit phase 2 across Breakwater Avenue.

After that project, NRP officials reportedly considered developing one of several sites on Cleveland's near-West Side. But those were too close to The Edison and might have put NRP in competition with itself for residents. Scranton Peninsula was considered a unique setting for NRP's housing products in Cleveland.

But the first developments on Scranton Peninsula are planned to be on its perimeter and will likely be underway soon. Right out of the gate will be Civic Builders' Carter Road Townhomes, just east of Columbus Road and across the street from the new Centennial Lake Link Trail. This is at the south end of Scranton Peninsula. Starting this summer, construction will begin on 12 single-family homes with unobstructed views of the river and downtown Cleveland.

Civic Builders' Carter Road Townhomes will be the first new
construction on Scranton Peninsula, albeit on its far southern
perimeter, starting this summer (Horton Harper).

At the north end of Scranton Peninsula will be a repurposed, vacant industrial building at 1970 Carter with offices, called The Avian at Thunderbird. This 20,000-square-foot, two-story building (that can be expanded with a new, 7,000-square-foot third floor) is nothing to look at right now. But developers say the open-floor building is structurally sound and can be reactivated for office use with relatively little investment.

It's a welcome change after decades of inaction, as Forest City Enterprises previously owned the land now part of the Thunderbird development. Forest City, a publicly traded company, apparently could not earn enough of a return from developing Scranton Peninsula to satisfy many of its Wall Street shareholders. So the land sat fallow. On the other hand, Forest City never had the opportunity to tap into Opportunity Zone equity as the backers of the Thunderbird development are reportedly pursuing.

Most of the land on Scranton Peninsula remains under the ownership of Scranton-Averell Inc. This company and its predecessors have owned land here for 200 years. While Scranton-Averell is not pursuing a redevelopment of its 55 acres of peninsula land, it is supportive of the Thunderbird consortium and agreed to have its properties shown in conceptual massings, designed similar to the Thunderbird portion.

These 19th-century storage buildings were approved for
demolition by the city, erasing more of Scranton Peninsula's
industrial past (Google)

Two historic buildings on Scranton-Averell's land were approved for demolition last fall by the city. The brick and wood-beam warehouses stood at 1920-1944 Scranton Road. Their earliest structures were built in 1884 and expanded three times by the Cleveland Storage Company to serve the storage and transshipment needs of the rapidly industrializing Flats area.

An 1884 advertisement stated, “We call your attention to the advantages offered by our warehouse ... especially to that large class of merchants to whom it is an advantage to have a stock of goods in this city from which to supply all small orders in broken lots, or for quick delivery to any desired point. We are prepared to receive pig iron, iron ore, copper, lumber, dry goods, canned goods, household goods.” The warehouse also had a large cold storage capacity for storing fruit, butter, eggs, and other perishable goods, according to documents compiled by the Ohio Department of Transportation from the Cleveland City Directory and the Historic American Engineering Record.

Signs for Civic Builders' Carter Road townhomes went up in
March at the south end of Scranton Peninsula (KJP).

Last but not least, in March 2018, Carter Inland LLC, an affiliate of the Great Lakes Brewing Co., acquired 8 acres (with an option for two more) of Thunderbird property to enable an expansion of the company's production and canning capabilities. The facility may also include a tasting room, open to the public. GLBC's existing brewery and restaurant, in Ohio City's Market District, cannot easily expand without demolishing buildings in the designated historic district. No formal plans for the Scranton Peninsula facility have been submitted to the city yet, but that could change in a matter of weeks or months.

Suffice it to say, Scranton Peninsula is going to start looking very different very soon. It will take time for the largely vacant expanse to regain productive use, simply because there is so much vacant land to reactivate. But the first steps on that thousand-mile journey are already being made.

END

Cleveland is rising up in the O-Zone

Perhaps the largest development in Cleveland being marketed
for Opportunity Zone financing is Thunderbird on Scranton
Peninsula. This 22-acre development could soon be the site
for corporate offices, residential buildings and riverfront
parks (CBRE).(CLICK TO ENLARGE ALL IMAGES)

Last week I sat in a small conference room with nearly a dozen real estate developers and investors planning a cool new project in Cleveland's urban core. I was there to add my two cents on a transportation access component of that project. Seated in the corner of the room was another guy, representing a lending institution that provides equity from one of the many fast-growing Opportunity Zone Funds.

The developers began to discuss how tall the apartment building component of their project should be. They agreed to add that question to their yet-to-be-undertaken feasibility study. The guy from the O-Zone Fund lender said in so many words "Whatever you come up with, let me know. There's going to be more than enough funding for your O-Zone piece of the capital stack."

In recent decades, scraping together enough equity for projects in all but a few land uses in all but a few sub-markets in Greater Cleveland has been something akin to a scavenger hunt. The capital stack for projects usually ended up looking like a cross section of baklava. While capital stacks still contain multiple layers, the private equity layer is thicker than it used to be, with O-Zone funding representing a way to expand the private sector contribution.

For those who don't yet know, under the 2017 federal tax overhaul, Opportunity Zones are designated census tracts with an individual poverty rate of at least 20 percent and a median family income no greater than 80 percent of the area median. These areas will be eligible for Opportunity Funds to invest in economic development to receive a 10-year federal capital gains tax break. Up to 25 percent of eligible tracts can be designated as O-Zones. Ohio recommended a maximum 320 out of 1,280 eligible census tracts.

Greater Cleveland's O-Zones include many urban core tracts that are already experiencing high levels of investment. They were designated because the state wanted to maximize the investment in and near O-Zones within its 10-year window. But cities like Cleveland, which has some of its hot neighborhoods (downtown, Ohio City, Tremont, University Circle) included in O-Zones, want to make sure this program doesn't neglect the low-income population it was designed to benefit. So it is encouraging that 20 percent of residential units in a given development be set aside as "affordable." In Cleveland, developers are finding those rents aren't all that much lower than market-rate rents.

Increasingly, real estate project meetings in Cleveland have an O-Zone guy sitting in the corner of the room, offering a pipeline to equity that simply did not exist before. A recent article at Cleveland.com noted that, thanks to the O-Zone program, "the floodgates are about to open."

Now, projects that many Cleveland-based construction crane aficionados could only dream about before are now seeing movement. Like what? Consider these large-scale projects in Cleveland's O-Zones (it is not known if all of these are or will directly receive equity via O-Zone funds):

Harbor Bay's Market Square development could break ground
by fall, featuring an apartment building (at left) and an office
building (at right). At 10 stories, the latter would be the tallest
timber-frame building in the country (Harbor Bay). 

Market Square (Ohio City - West 25th and Lorain): The Forest City will soon be home to the tallest wood timber frame building in the United States thanks to Harbor Bay Real Estate Advisors. A new 10-story office building will be flanked by a seven-story apartment building, built next to the Ohio City rail station on the Red Line linking the airport, downtown and University Circle. Construction is due to get underway this summer.

Public and private financing, possibly including Opportunity
Zone equity, is finalizing the capital stack for Stark Enterprises'
nuCLEus development in the Gateway District (Stark).

NuCLEus (Downtown - East 4th between Prospect & Huron): Demolitions are slated to begin by fall by Stark Enterprises to prepare for the construction of two 24-story towers -- one for residential and the other for offices. Although the project was scaled back from a 54-story tower, the increased liquidity of equity markets, thanks to O-Zone funding, will likely aid this long-planned project.

Library Lofts apartments, circled in red, is the second phase
of the multi-block Circle Square development. But it is the
first new-construction element of the overall development
that could bring a $300 million investment (MDP).

Circle Square (University Circle - 10601 Euclid Ave.): Plans for Library Lofts, representing the second phase of the multi-block City Square development by Midwest Development Partners, are now making their way through the city approvals process. If approved, construction on the apartment building, topping out at 8-11 stories, could begin by year's end, a source says. The development includes a new Cleveland MLK Branch Library to free up its current library site for a future development phase. The first phase involved Orlean Co.'s $16 million renovation of the 13-story Fenway Manor apartments that began in 2018.

Geotechnical drilling to gather soil samples was conducted in
March below a parking lot at 720 Euclid Ave. prior to the
engineering work for an apartment tower that could be
up to 20 stories tall (NCLE-UrbanOhio.com).

Cleveland City Club Apartments (Downtown - 720 Euclid Ave.): Two sources say this is going to be a high-rise apartment building in the 17- to 20-story range. The scale of this proposed development is comparable to that of City Club's apartment projects in other Midwest cities. It is possible that construction on this project could start by the end of this year or early next year.

An updated rendering of Akara's Kenect Cleveland apartment
building, sans movie theater, in the Wolstein Group's Flats
East Bank development downtown (Akara).

Kenect Cleveland (Downtown - 1155 West 11th St.): When the Wolstein Group wraps up construction of several riverside restaurants in the first part of Phase 3 of its Flats East Bank development, look for it to proceed with construction of the second half of Phase 3. This includes a 12-story apartment building and shops in partnership with Chicago-based Akara Partners. That means construction should start early next year.

In Cleveland's fast-growing University Circle, a new apartment
building up to 10 stories tall may rise on the current site of the
Centers for Dialysis Care (Google). 

Infinium (University Circle - 11717 Euclid Ave.): A source says that the Finch Group seeks to build an 11-story 133-unit mixed-income apartment building with 32 townhouses, ground-floor retail and a parking deck at the site of the current home of the soon-to-be-relocated Cleveland-East facility for the Centers for Dialysis Care. The property is owned by University Circle Inc. There is no timeline for development yet but it could be in the next 12-18 months.

While the Avian office building isn't by itself a large real
estate project, it is likely to be the first phase of the huge
Thunderbird development that promises to transform the
desolate Scranton Peninsula into a vibrant, mixed-use
neighborhood of offices, housing and shops (CBRE).

Thunderbird (Scranton Peninsula - 2000 Carter Rd.): This large, 22-acre site is being developed in 2- to 8-acre chunks and heavily marketed for O-Zone funding. Although Great Lakes Brewing Company's expansion here was announced first, the first development will likely be the repurposing of a vacant industrial building at 1970 Carter with offices, called The Avian at Thunderbird. Also, the NRP Group of Cleveland is reportedly taking a 7.44-acre parcel to develop a parcel called Lot A with 300+ apartments. Lastly, Hemingway Development may be seeking to build offices, shops and waterfront parks here.

At this time, reports are that only Geis' square-shaped parcel at
the northeast corner of East 9th Street and Bolivar Road may
be developed with mid- to high-rise condo building. The rest
 of Geis' land here may remain a parking deck (Google).

Bolivar-9th condos (Downtown - 2173 East 9th St.): A source says that a skinny residential tower, perhaps upwards of 10 stories tall, could be built on this site. Downtown Investment Group LLC, a Geis Companies affiliate, bought the former New York Spaghetti House and razed it for future development. Although there is not yet a timeline for this project, the city in 2015 gave Geis permission to use the property for a parking lot for up to five years.

Since 2000, The Frangos Group has acquired 3.3 acres of land
along East 14th between Prospect and Carnegie avenues, west
of the Wolstein Center at CSU. Most of the land was acquired
in 2017 and 2018 as The Frangos Group shifted its focus from
operating parking lots to developing real estate (Google).

Prospectus 14 (Downtown - 1412 Prospect Ave.): Throughout its history, the Frangos Group has focused on parking as its core business. But the firm is widening its horizons by pursuing more real estate development opportunities, including on its 3.32 acres of land it has acquired in an angular block in the Campus District. Sources say a large development is in the works here, including possibly a high-rise apartment building.

Those are Cleveland's largest developments not yet under construction which are benefiting or could benefit from Opportunity Zone financing. This doesn't include two projects I wrote about just last week in my article Developers discover Midtown's other axis. And, as with my opening example, there are more projects in the early stages of planning that might offer buildings about 10 stories tall, give or take a couple of floors, whose developers don't yet have site control. Hopefully I'll be able to share news about them soon.

END

Developers discover Midtown's other axis

Exciting plans and projects are percolating along East 55th
Street in the heart of Cleveland's Midtown district. This was
once one of the city's most vibrant neighborhood downtowns.
New investments here could help restore some of that lost
density (Pennrose). CLICK TO ENLARGE ALL IMAGES

Much of the rebuilding in Cleveland's Midtown, between downtown and University Circle, has focused along the parallel east-west roadways of Euclid, Carnegie and Chester avenues. But the primary north-south axis, East 55th Street, is largely devoid of similar development activity. That's true even where East 55th intersects Euclid, Carnegie and Chester.

Those intersections once had the density and activity of a small downtown called Penn Square, with large apartment and commercial buildings, shops, cafes, theaters, two streetcar lines that carried 150,000 riders per day (as many riders as all of the transit agencies combined serving Northeast Ohio today), and Cleveland's main station for the Pennsylvania Railroad that had 24 daily passenger trains to/from places as far west as St. Louis and as far east as New York City.

Looking east on Euclid Avenue toward the intersection of East
55th Street in the early 1940s. The Pennsylvania Railroad bridge
slices across the vibrant scene, including one of the city's busiest
streetcar transfer points outside of downtown thanks in part to
Pennsylvania RR station just out of view to the right (Press/CSU).

Today, it is home to social service organizations, gas stations, vacant lots, abandoned buildings, and a City of Cleveland vehicle maintenance garage. That could soon change with two major developments emerging and long-range planning underway.

Indeed, it already is changing with more than $80 million in new development within a few blocks of the East 55th-Euclid/Carnegie/Chester area. This includes a new Link 59 office building, University Hospitals Rainbow Center for Women and Children, and Dave's Supermarket just east of East 55th. Just west of East 55th, a 65,000-square-foot former automobile assembly building at 4600 Euclid Ave. was renovated into offices, as was the 54,000-square-foot former Agora Building (previously the Metropolitan Theater opera house and WHK auditorium) into the Offices at Penn Square, 5000 Euclid.

Two major, new developments are being pursued by proven companies with a good track record of delivering complicated and/or large-scale projects in Cleveland: Berusch Development Partners, LLC and Pennrose Properties, LLC.

Pennrose's plans -- to redevelop the long-vacant Warner & Swasey complex -- are publicly available albeit still conceptual. They are posted at the Cleveland Opportunity Zone Exchange, a Web-based portal where investors seeking to minimize capital gains taxes and where real estate developers seeking to build within designed Opportunity Zones (dubbed O-zones) can find each other.

Warner & Swasey's four lower-level sheds as seen from
the roof of the factory's taller structures. This view is one
of 15 photos of the site by Jeffrey R. Stroup published
in an online slideshow by Scene Magazine (Scene). 

Pennrose estimates the Warner & Swasey redevelopment will cost about $53 million and is seeking a $10 million Opportunity Zone investment.

The City of Cleveland, which owned the Warner & Swasey property since 1991, requested proposals for the redevelopment of the unused, 3.1-acre site last year. The RFP also noted that if the winning developer wished to acquire the neighboring city-owned parcels, totaling 7.9 acres and which includes a city vehicle maintenance garage, the city would be willing to consider selling them as long as the developer has a strategy for replacing the garage.

Pennrose was the winner. According to its listing on the O-zone portal, the Philadelphia-based firm acquired the entire 7.9 acres of land, which includes the east side of East 55th, from Carnegie to Euclid and over to the Norfolk Southern Corp. railroad tracks. The city will contribute to the project several vacant, decaying buildings ranging from one to five stories tall and totaling 221,727 square feet, Pennrose representatives said in their listing.

A rendering of the Warner & Swasey property for a renovation
project proposed in 2010. That project fell through (Geis).

The north end of the site was the former Pennsylvania Railroad passenger station which was built in 1912 (replacing smaller depots dating to the 1850s) and demolished in 1973. Its two pedestrian underpasses below the tracks, which had stairwells and baggage elevators up to track-level platforms, remain. South of it is the five-story Warner & Swasey building, made of reddish-brown stone and constructed from 1904 to 1910. It replaced the original Warner & Swasey facility that had been erected on this site in the early 1880s. Warner & Swasey built telescopes and machine lathes here.

As currently proposed, the low-level structures will be repurposed to provide covered parking while the five-story building will offer housing over offices and a small amount of amenity retail to support the residential and office tenants. The housing will be affordable at a range of incomes and targeted to mixed-income workforce households. The office and program space will be marketed to supportive services for job readiness, workforce development and employment training organizations.

The ground level of the Warner & Swasey facility is proposed to
have 33,654 gross square feet of office space in the base plan with
up to 40,453 gross square feet if the fourth parking shed, near the
top of the graphic, is developed with offices instead. Floors 2-5 are
proposed to be converted to residential, as seen below (Pennrose).

"We believe the site will be able to achieve collected rents within a comparable range of the overall rent per square foot averages at the selected properties (that offer comparable residences nearby)," Pennrose representatives said in a written statement.

Estimated monthly rents are $1,105 to $1,170 for one-bedroom units and $1,275 to $1,360 for two-bedroom units. These rents are well below the average collected rents at the comparable developments in the Midtown/University Circle area. Pennrose anticipates receiving Low Income Housing Tax Credits this year, as well as federal and state Historic Tax Credits, New Market Tax Credits plus private debt, most likely agency products with favorable terms.

St. Luke's Hospital (before) and St. Luke's Manor (after) its
redevelopment by Pennrose Development in 2014. The photos
show that a gutted building can be saved and turned into a
comfortable, even elegant building again (Pennrose).

Pennrose has a track record with large-scale, complicated and historic renovation projects in lower-income neighborhoods nationwide. Its best local example is the renovation and conversion of the 1927-built, 380,000-square-foot St. Luke's Hospital in Cleveland's Buckeye-Shaker neighborhood into a senior housing complex. The long-vacant building was heavily vandalized but Pennrose was able to bring it back to life as St. Luke's Manor for $53 million -- ironically for the same price as is estimated for the Warner & Swasey project.

Meanwhile, at the southwest corner of Euclid and East 55th, a gas station could soon give way to a mixed-use development. It has been nearly 40 years since this corner had such a use. The L-shaped, three-story Leonard Building, with apartments over ground-floor retail, succumbed to a loss of transportation access, depopulation and ultimately the wrecking ball by the early 1980s. It was replaced by a Shell gas station.

Tarrify Properties has city approval to demolish its gas station
at East 55th Street and Euclid Avenue. Replacing it may be a
larger mixed-use development spreading to adjacent parcels
south to Carnegie and west to the former Agora Building,
renovated as the Offices at Penn Square (Google).

Since 2004, the gas station property has been owned by Ahmad Taye of Tarrify Properties. His firm gave a presentation to the City Planning Commission on behalf of a Cleveland-based national developer, Berusch Development Partners, proposing to demolish the station.

For a demolition to be approved by the city, a site plan has to be submitted showing how the property would look after its structures are torn down. A site plan with temporary landscaping was submitted and the demolition was approved March 15. Demolition and removal of underground tanks began in early April. However a long-term site plan showing the eventual proposed development was not submitted nor is it publicly available, said MidTown Cleveland Inc. Executive Director Jeff Epstein.

Looking east on Euclid Avenue toward the intersection of East
55th Street in October 2018. Compare this view with the second
image from the top of this article. If Berusch's and Pennrose's
plans come to pass, this once-vibrant urban intersection won't
look so desolate anymore (Google).

He also said there were no further updates regarding Berusch's project, even though the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority in January acquired by quit claim deed 1.7 acres of land to the south and west of the 0.9-acre gas station site. And in February, the port authority amended a longstanding property access and assessment agreement with Lassi Enterprises, LLC, the land assembly and project partnership equity subsidiary of MidTown Cleveland Inc.

If the port authority and gas station sites are combined as part of a single development, it would abut the Offices at Penn Square and run the length of East 55th between Euclid and Carnegie -- opposite of the Pennrose development site.

Interestingly, Berusch worked with Pennrose on the St. Luke's redevelopment in 2014 as well as many other developments in Cleveland's urban core, in the suburbs and associated with college campuses in Ohio and New Jersey. Unfortunately, no one is yet revealing what Berusch's plans are.

END