Sherwin-Williams' new HQ+R&D = 6,000 jobs for downtown Cleveland

City Planning Commission approved this banner for the side
of the current Sherwin-Williams headquarters in 2016. Soon,
SHW's land will be along the north side of Superior Avenue
and will accommodate its new headquarters, research facili-
ties and 6,000 jobs from throughout the world (CPC).
CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM

Sherwin-Williams' (SHW) top executives are urging department heads to consolidate as many activities and jobs as possible from around the world into its new headquarters and research facilities.

The end result of that directive is that SHW's global headquarters plus research and development (HQ+R&D) center could add 2,500 jobs, bringing the total for the entire campus to 6,000 employees, according to sources who spoke off the record and provided internal company data.

As reported here at NEOtrans in recent days and weeks, SHW plans to build its HQ+R&D on the west side of Public Square in downtown Cleveland. SHW has begun the process of buying land currently owned by the Jacobs and Weston groups. Barring a startling change of direction, it means downtown Cleveland will be the beneficiary of thousands of new and relocated jobs.

SHW already has about 3,500 jobs downtown, spread among SHW's HQ at 101 W. Prospect Ave., the neighboring Skylight Office Tower, and the John G. Breen Technology Center, 601 Canal Rd.

The job projections are coming into focus as SHW's facility programming rapidly progresses. Programming is an early phase of the building planning process. For office buildings, departmental managers are queried about their current and projected staffing, space needs and patterns of use for the coming years.

From those numbers, architects begin to assemble blocks of space to be shaped and molded according to a variety of factors, ranging from the available land to the personal preferences of C-suite executives.

That process is well underway for SHW and its architect Vocon Partners LLC which is designing the interiors of the coatings giant's new global HQ+R&D facilities. It is likely another architect will be brought in to design the exteriors of those facilities, sources said.

The additional jobs for downtown Cleveland are based on the departmental feedback SHW executives and Vocon architects received by their deadline last week.

This is what 3.5 million square feet of new development in
Weston's Superblock would look like, based on a discontinued
Weston plan. Sherwin-Williams is planning 1.8 million square
feet of offices and research facilities plus perhaps 500,000 to 1
million square feet of structured parking. The street in the mid-
dle of this east-looking massing is Frankfort Avenue (Weston).

Five years ago, SHW outgrew its HQ of the last 89 years. So SHW has spread its Cuyahoga County workforce among a half-dozen facilities. Plus there are hundreds of jobs in other cities that SHW reportedly would like to have at its HQ but can't due to lack of space.

In Cuyahoga County, in addition to the SHW jobs downtown, the Fortune 500 company also has more than 250 employees at a 151,830-square-foot office/flex space located at 4770-4780 Hinckley Industrial Parkway in Cleveland.

It also has several hundred employees at its 388,766-square-foot Automotive Finishes Corp. global headquarters, research and development facility and training center, located at 4440 Warrensville Center Rd., Warrensville Hts. About 100 employees are office workers and might move downtown.

The office employment doesn't tell the full story either, because part of the spatial needs involves employees visiting from offices, laboratories and stores located around the world for training.

SHW's HQ will have a lot more of those visitors, especially as training of vice presidents, salespeople, information technology, human resources and other on-the-job development will all be consolidated downtown, sources said.

There is a lot to consolidate. SHW rents offices and classroom spaces at Baldwin-Wallace University in Berea and Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland's University Circle area for training activities.

SHW's new training center will also be downtown, likely resulting in the reduction of activities at its 24,150-square-foot Strongsville Training Center, 11350 Alameda Dr. where as many as 300 employees are based. A model store and small training staff will likely remain.

According to data acquired by NEOtrans, the number of people visiting SHW's seminars and three-day-long training classes would fill more than 100 hotel rooms every weeknight for an entire year. And that number will grow as SHW grows.

Looking west from Public Square along Superior Avenue in
2014, the Jacobs lot in the right-foreground and the Weston
Superblock beyond is nearly 8 acres of parking lots in the
heart of downtown Cleveland. Purchase contracts, geo-
technical surveys and Certificates of Disclosure for
SHW's HQ+R&D have finally put those desolate
parking lots in serious danger (Google).

Currently, most visitors stay in hotels off Interstate 71 in Middleburg Heights. Those hotel occupants will follow the training center downtown. By staying at downtown hotels, more trainees might be encouraged to stay an extra night to attend a sporting event, enjoy a Playhouse Square show or visit a museum or two.

Another activity to be consolidated downtown is research. The 140,293-square-foot Breen Center is so cramped that it could not accept any of Valspar's R&D workers from Minneapolis after SHW acquired its northern rival in 2017.

Valspar's 170,000-square-foot facility is equally cramped. It has roughly 400 workers, meaning that both facilities have 425 square feet of space per research worker. According to sources, the new R&D facility in downtown Cleveland will measure 350,000 square feet, or about 500 square feet per research worker.

The office component for SHW's HQ is estimated at 1.45 million square feet, sources say. The projected total cost of SHW's HQ+R&D facilities could be upwards of $1 billion.

SHW's efforts took a substantive step forward on Oct. 8 when it and Welty Building Co., SHW's facilities consultant, chose Gilbane Building Co. as its construction management firm for the new HQ+R&D.

Those HQ+R&D facilities are slated to be built on 7.93 acres of land owned by the Jacobs Group and the Weston Group to the west of downtown Cleveland's Public Square. SHW continues to advance its due diligence on those properties. They have been used as parking lots for decades.

The due diligence includes contracting out for geotechnical surveying of soil samples in recent weeks. Surveying work began in the 6.76 acres of Weston lots Nov. 2 and continued for several days.

Survey wells were drilled into the Jacobs
lot on Public Square in the past week and
then capped so that crews could return on
a recurring basis to check groundwater
levels and possibly remove water from
the ground over many months prior to
excavation and construction (KJP).

During the week of Nov. 11, survey crews moved over to the Jacobs lot where they drilled wells to monitor groundwater for an extended period of time and/or possibly to remove it prior to excavation for the foundations of a headquarters tower.

Five years ago, SHW hired AECOM to conduct geotechnical surveys of the Jacobs lot when it considered building a 1-million-square-foot headquarters here. SHW already knows a lot about the soil conditions far below the Jacobs lot.

Plans for the HQ tower were shelved in 2016 when SHW turned its resources toward acquiring Valspar. SHW's growth accelerated after acquiring Valspar, making the new HQ+R&D an even more critical need.

SHW's due diligence advanced further last week. NEOtrans was advised days in advance by a source that SHW would begin filing Certificates of Disclosure with the city of Cleveland. Such certificates are submitted by persons or corporations seeking to buy land. The filings serve as requests to the city for disclosures about the properties' histories.

Sure enough, starting on Nov. 15, a title company began filing Certificates of Disclosure with the city for parcels in the Weston lots. The filings provided a public corroboration of high-level sources who said SHW came to the conclusion that the Jacobs and Weston lots were the best location for its HQ+R&D after considering a dozen alternatives in Greater Cleveland.

No sites outside of Greater Cleveland were pursued by SHW and Welty, the sources said. In fact, SHW/Welty approached only one property owner outside of downtown Cleveland -- the DiGeronimo Co. which owns the former VA Hospital site in Brecksville. Even then, SHW considered it only for the R&D facility, not the HQ.

NEOtrans began reporting on SHW's pursuit of a new HQ+R&D facility on Oct. 31, 2018, more than ten months before SHW finally acknowledged it publicly. SHW announced it was pursuing a new HQ+R&D on Sept. 12.

Two city sources said SHW may announce the site for its new HQ+R&D facilities as early as next month.

END

Sherwin-Williams files permits with Cleveland prior to acquiring downtown land

Sherwin-Williams continued to take steps this week in the
direction of selecting the Jacobs and Weston lots west of
downtown Cleveland's Public Square for its new global
headquarters and research facilities (Geowizical).
CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM

Twelve certificates of disclosure were filed Nov. 15 with the City of Cleveland's Building Department by an unidentified buyer that is ultimately seeking to acquire all 5.65 acres of Weston Group-owned properties in the "Superblock" west of downtown Cleveland's Public Square.

Although the buyer wasn't identified, a source earlier this week notified NEOtrans in advance that Sherwin-Williams (SHW) would be filing the certificates as part of its efforts to secure the downtown properties.

The Superblock, so-called because of its large size, is bounded by Superior and St. Clair avenues, plus West 3rd and West 6th streets. It is located in downtown's Warehouse District.

A certificate of disclosure provides violation/condemnation and legal use information from the city so that the potential property buyer can make a well-informed decision about the property it is seeking.

Building department records show that the certificates were filed by First American Commercial Due Diligence Services which is headquartered in Norman, Oklahoma. It also has an office in Cleveland.

The Jacobs and Weston lots are outlined in red (Google).

Ironically, commercial firms don't have to file certificates of disclosure before buying a property, a Cleveland city official said. Plus, there won't be much information for the buyer to get since there are no buildings on the properties and the parking lots won't remain as parking. Lastly, the buyer could have just sent a zoning letter to the city for free rather than pay $60 per certificate filed and gotten more information from the city.

Filing certificates of disclosure with the city doesn't guarantee that a property transfer will occur. For example, last January a real estate developer filed a certificate of disclosure with the city regarding the old Westinghouse plant near Edgewater Park.

But the developer, Sustainable Community Associates, couldn't make the numbers work for its proposed mixed-use redevelopment and dropped its plans in August.

A source closely involved with SHW's efforts to develop a new headquarters plus research and development (HQ+R&D) facilities said that SHW had secured a purchase contract with Weston "months ago" to buy its Superblock properties.

Until a purchase is finalized, however, SHW can walk away from the contract if it gets a better deal for another site or if it finds fault with the Superblock.

No similar certificates were filed as of Nov. 15 for the 1.17-acre Jacobs Group-owned parking lot on Public Square, which two other sources close to the SHW HQ+R&D project confirmed is part of the project site.

Survey crews were working in the Weston lots two weeks ago
and in the Jacobs lot this week, taking soil samples prior to
acquiring property and beginning detail design work (KJP).

Sometime this week, someone drilled what appeared to be fresh geotechnical survey holes in the Jacobs lot. They were likely drilled during the overnight hours so as not to disrupt daytime parking -- or possibly to avoid attracting the same kind of attention that similar drilling in the Weston lots two weeks ago attracted.

Similarly, no certificate was filed for the former Stark Enterprises headquarters at the southwest corner of West 3rd and St. Clair. It is the only building left standing within the Superblock. Stark sold the building last December to Realife Real Estate Group for $2.65 million before moving its offices to 629 Euclid Ave.

According to two Cleveland city officials who spoke off the record, Sherwin-Williams (SHW) will announce the site for its new global headquarters and research (HQ+R&D) facilities next month.

A source says that Bedrock Cleveland hasn't given up in its efforts to win SHW support for building its HQ on a parking lot between the Cuyahoga River and Bedrock-owned Tower City Center. The Bedrock site has been identified by several sources as SHW's second-favorite location for its new HQ+R&D.

But all indications from insider sources continue to point to the Fortune 500 firm announcing a 1.8-million-square-foot HQ+R&D complex, plus hundreds of thousands of square feet worth of structured parking, to rise on the 6.77 acres of land owned by the Jacobs and Weston groups west of Cleveland's Public Square.

The public filings of Nov. 15 show that SHW continues to move in that direction.

END

Cleveland remembers, jump-starts the Forgotten Triangle

The area around East 75th-79th and the Opportunity Corri-
dor is shown in this northeastward looking view. East 75th
is left with East 79th cutting diagonally to the lower left.
The Red Line, Opportunity Corridor boulevard and Blue/
Green Line Rapid cuts left-right across the image. The
proposed police headquarters would be located at the
left edge of this conceptual land use vision (BBC).
CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM

The 1970s weren't kind to America's older cities. The white middle class fled from them, taking their homes and jobs to the suburbs. Left behind were low-income minorities, shuttered factories and stores, hopelessness, drugs and crime.

Cleveland suffered greatly, losing more residents in the 1970s than any other decade. But Cleveland was far from alone.

America's greatest city, New York, was a media darling for urban decline in the 1970s. Some considered New York City beyond saving, even suggesting Manhattan be turned into a prison island, inspiring the 1981 movie "Escape From New York."

Another movie came out that same year which is relevant to recent real estate news here in Cleveland. That movie was "Fort Apache, The Bronx" starring Shaker Heights native Paul Newman.

The movie is set at a real location, the New York Police Department's 41st Precinct building in the South Bronx. Through the 1960s and into the 1970s, the precinct offices stood as the neighborhood around it fell. It became a safe haven from a neighborhood that police considered hostile.

The 41st Precinct earned the nickname "Fort Apache" from the 19th-century U.S. cavalry outpost on Native American lands depicted in the 1948 movie starring John Wayne and Henry Fonda. In the film, the Army and the Apaches battled but the Army could always retreat to their lonely but safe outpost on America's western prairie.

Shaker Heights native Paul Newman starred in the 1981 movie
"Fort Apache, The Bronx" -- about a police station outpost
among the burnt-out shells of buildings in this New York
City neighborhood after decades of abandonment (NPR).

In the 1970s, one-third of the Bronx's population had moved out. Desperate landlords hired mobsters to burn down their apartment buildings and influence the investigations so that they could collect insurance money. Looking out the windows of the 41st Precinct revealed the crumbling shells of apartment buildings and businesses.

The rubble of abandoned cities and the sometimes violent desperation among those left behind is how many neighborhoods in Midwest and Northeast cities earned the tag "War Zones."

Few places in Cleveland earned that tag so well as its Kinsman neighborhood. East of East 55th and going uphill toward Mount Pleasant, this was a district of worker housing for newly arrived European immigrants to work in factories and on the railroads.

It was a smoky, polluted area, sandwiched between the Nickel Plate Road's East 55th railyard and the Pennsylvania Railroad's Kinsman Yard. Those railyards attracted hobos during the Great Depression.

And the area became the dumping ground for many of the Torso Murderer's dismembered victims in the 1930s. Kinsman was where city Safety Director Eliot Ness burned down shanty towns, hoping to scare off the Torso Murderer.

The proposed site of the Cleveland Police Department head-
quarters, at the intersection of East 75th Street and Grand
Avenue, seen in May 2019. Construction of the Opportunity
Corridor boulevard has since begun through here (Google).

Among the least desirable Cleveland neighborhoods to flee during the post-war era of "White Flight," Kinsman was near the top of the list. Of course, poor minorities left behind tend to flee as well, often to the nearest intact neighborhood. The cycle of decline, blight and abandonment was set into motion, chasing hope and the feeling middle class farther and farther out from the city's older geographic center.

With urban sprawl, the metropolitan area grows outward without a corresponding increase in metro area population. The Greater Cleveland-Akron metro population has been stuck at about 2.8 million since 1960.

Sprawl ripped open a gaping hole near the metropolitan area's geographic center, commonly called the "Urban Doughnut Hole." Cleveland's doughnut hole today includes more than a dozen square miles of the near-east side, creating urban prairies. Those prairies, although much smaller, are as desolate as the prairies portrayed in "Fort Apache" and the rubble of buildings near "Fort Apache, The Bronx."

The southeast-angled alignment of Kinsman Avenue and the urban prairie around it helped the area earn the name "The Forgotten Triangle."

Through it run two high-capacity rapid transit lines, each featuring stations at East 79th Street although several blocks apart. They are among the least-used rail stations in the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority (GCRTA) system. Alongside are fields and overgrowth where 19th-century factories stood but closed 40 years ago.

A rendering of what the Opportunity Corridor could look like
through Cleveland's Forgotten Triangle (ODOT).

And it is where the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) is building its $350 million Opportunity Corridor boulevard to link Interstate 490 with booming University Circle -- Ohio's fourth-largest employment district.

Just up the tracks of GCRTA's Red Line in both directions, developers are squeezing luxury apartments and condo buildings within a short walk of stations in Little Italy, Downtown and Ohio City. Those areas avoided the decline of the Forgotten Triangle. They retained a community, a foundation on which to build. We began to rediscover why humanity had liked cities for 5,000 years.

This area is an empty slate. It's a chance to go SIM City here.

So while developers are encountering increasing resistance from NIMBY's in hot areas like Little Italy and Ohio City, the Forgotten Triangle remains the ultimate doughnut hole that needs be filled to counter sprawl. But there's no momentum here. No private developer wants to build a Fort Apache in this urban prairie.

So the city decided to do it. Ironically, it is doing so with a police presence -- much like the Bronx's 41st Precinct. Except this police presence its much larger and includes a large amount of "civilian" employment -- database managers, accountants, human resources staff, purchasing managers, secretaries, etc.

Conceptual rendering of the new Red Line rail station at
East 79th Street, for which construction is scheduled to
start in 2020 and be completed a year later (GCRTA).

On Nov. 14, city officials announced it would build a new Cleveland Police Department (CPD) headquarters at East 75th Street and Grand Avenue. The location is next to where ODOT contractors are now building the Opportunity Corridor boulevard. And it is a short walk from where GCRTA will start building in 2020 a new Red Line rail station at East 79th.

City governments are responsible for determining how the land in their jurisdictions are to be used for the betterment of the community as a whole. Usually that is done through zoning. But when a city has an opportunity to help change the fortunes of a neighborhood by the location of civic facilities, it should do so.

And that's what the city finally did with its CPD HQ after several failed attempts at locating at two other locations downtown. In the Forgotten Triangle, the city will plop down amid new transportation facilities nearly 700 jobs, relocated from the corner of Ontario Street and St. Clair Avenue.

There will also be many visitors to the CPD HQ including those researching and requesting copies of police records, suppliers doing business with the CPD, as well as witnesses, lawyers and accused criminals meeting with police.

There will also likely be lots of travel between the CPD HQ and the Cuyahoga County Jail. The latter is also the subject of a site location analysis by the county. With the city choosing the intersection of East 75th and the Opportunity Corridor as the site for its CPD HQ, it may also influence the county of where it might eventually put its new Consolidated Jail Facility.

The Box Spot Open Air Market was under construction on
Kinsman Avenue at East 80th Street in this May 2019 scene.
The Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority headquarters
is at right, but not accessible from the sidewalk (Google).

On April Fools Day of this year, I joked that the county would build its new jail as glassy high-rises on the Opportunity Corridor. But that attempt at humor might prove to be true, and that's possibly not a bad thing.

If the new roadway was called anything else, it's doubtful that anyone would raise their eyebrows at putting a jail on the cheap, vast open lands along the Opportunity Corridor. There already is a jail along this new boulevard -- the Cuyahoga County Juvenile Detention Center between Quincy Avenue and the Red Line tracks.

The key to whether or how the new CPD HQ might spark some development momentum depends on the design of the new facilities, possibly totaling nearly 500,000 square feet when parking is included.

For example, in 2010, the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority (CMHA) built its new headquarters and storage/garage totaling 92,158 square feet at Kinsman and East 80th. The building is a bunker. It is dead at street level because it has no pedestrian permeability along the sidewalks.

General location of the new Cleveland Police Department
headquarters is identified with the orange oval. It is located
where the new Opportunity Corridor boulevard will intersect
East 75th Street, between two rapid transit stations (Google).

Nor are there any ancillary public uses like a sidewalk cafe or a bank or a job training center offering pedestrian access from the sidewalk -- just the ubiquitous Cleveland grassy moat encircling this modern, public building.

Pedestrians, with their eyes on the street scene, make an area feel safer and more vibrant. The lack of them is no surprise why the CMHA had little spin-off benefit for the immediately surrounding neighborhood, despite placing several hundred jobs on Kinsman.

Nine years later, it took the stewardship of the Burten Bell Carr (BBC) community development corporation to spur construction of a supportive development across Kinsman from CMHA. Construction began earlier this year on the Box Spot Open Air Market where visitors can shop at small businesses and eat foods grown by the neighborhood's many urban farms and gardens.

But the CPD HQ will have more workers and more people coming and going 24 hours a day than CMHA. If it isn't built like a bunker, it offers the opportunity for more cafes, restaurants and shops in the surrounding area -- preferably placed as ground-floor uses in new residential or commercial buildings. Those ground-floor public uses can also serve employees at the nearby Orlando Baking Co., Federal Equipment Co., Techceuticals and the Miceli Dairy Products Co.

The New York Police Department's former 41st Precinct
building (aka "Fort Apache, The Bronx"), now an office
building for detectives, is the red brick building at left.
Since the dark days of the 1970s and 80s, this South
Bronx neighborhood has been be redeveloped and
repopulated into a vibrant community (Google).

And they can also provide a foundation for more housing planned by BBC as well as by private developers. With few restaurants or retail for miles, developers would be hard-pressed to justify taking a risk by building in the Forgotten Triangle. The CPD HQ can change that desolation.

Indeed, in New York's South Bronx, the 41st Precinct building was renovated in the 1990s by the city as an office building for detectives. That commitment by the city supported a revival of its neighborhood, replacing burnt-out shells of apartment buildings with new housing, cafes and shops to support a diverse, working-class neighborhood.

Hopefully that will be the long-term outcome of Cleveland's new police headquarters as well.

END

New CPD HQ to rise on Opportunity Corridor; is new county jail far behind?

General location of the new Cleveland Police Department

headquarters is identified with the orange oval. It is located

where the new Opportunity Corridor boulevard will intersect

East 75th Street, between two rapid transit stations (Google).

CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM

Starting in 2021, as many as 700 workers and hundreds of visitors will come each day to a newly built Cleveland Police Department (CPD) headquarters. Its location? Near to where the new $350 million Opportunity Corridor boulevard will soon be intersecting East 75th Street.

That location was announced publicly today at a hearing of Cleveland City Council's Safety Committee. Specifically the site will be at East 75th and Grand Avenue, just west of the Orlando Baking Co.

The site will also be in between two Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority rail stations on East 79th -- one for the Airport-Windermere Red Line and the other for the Shaker Heights-Waterfront Blue/Green lines.

Proposed is a multi-story office campus with 180,000 square feet of office space for HQ operations and another 115,000 square feet of space for storage, garage and supportive offices, according to the city's request for proposals.

The existing Cleveland Police Department headquarters is
located in this eight-story building that is part of the Justice
Center, at Ontario Street and St. Clair Avenue (Ideastream).

The site will also have secure parking for 400 passenger cars separate from public parking. Total area for the parking needs is estimated at roughly 160,000 square feet. So much parking may require a multi-level parking garage to be provided.

Cost of the project isn't known, but it could exceed $100 million. Fortunately, the city may already have most of the money it needs to afford this facility.

Consider that the city received $9.25 million from the sale of its old police HQ at the Justice Center on Ontario Street downtown. 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, with annual payments of $5 million over 20 years, which is what the city appeared willing to do, per its RFP.

The city's RFP, originally issued in early 2017,  also requested that any proposed CPD HQ sites be west of East 55th and north of Interstate 490. The chosen site is east of East 55th and located on the Opportunity Corridor that is now under construction to link I-490 with University Circle.

This is the specific location for the Cleveland Police Depart-
ment headquarters, located just west of East 75th Street and
along Grand Avenue. The site is north of the Opportunity
Corridor, now under construction (City of Cleveland).

The city issued its RFP in the hopes 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 large space or security requirements.

In 2017, the city had attempted to lease 55 Public Square, but too many structural and security changes were needed. The city also had a $60 million deal in place to buy the Plain Dealer Plaza at 1801 Superior Ave. but the Department of Homeland Security reportedly nixed it for undisclosed reasons. At one point, it appeared the city would move to its old CPD HQ on Payne Ave.

In locating the CPD HQ along the Opportunity Corridor, it suggests that other developments may also be in the cards. The most significant is whether Cuyahoga County's proposed new consolidated jail facility, representing hundreds of thousands of square feet of new construction and hundreds more employees, may soon follow.

The county is considering whether to rebuild or replace its aging, inadequate jail facilities and consolidate them with suburban jails to save money. This will also coincide with jail reform that could reduce the county's jail population and thus its space requirements.

This one of many land use vision documents issued for the

Opportunity Corridor in recent years. This is from 2015, by

the Burten Bell Carr Community Development Corp. (BBC).

The current county jail is located in the 42-year-old Justice Center complex downtown. The courthouse tower may also be renovated or replaced as part of the county's comprehensive facility analysis. In its RFP, the city wanted the CPD HQ located near the county's emergency operations center, jails and courthouse.

There also are few cafes, restaurants or shops in the vicinity of the proposed new CPD HQ site on East 79th. There would have to be a number of new supportive businesses for the nearly 700 workers and hundreds more daily visitors to the CPD campus.

Access to the site should not be difficult. Construction of the third and final phase of the Opportunity Corridor, between I-490 at East 55th Street and East 93rd Street is due to conclude in mid-2021, according to the Ohio Department of Transportation. Cost of the roadway's final phase is $150 million.

GCRTA's Red Line's East 79th aging rail station is scheduled for replacement starting in 2020 at a cost of $10 million. It is due to be completed sometime in 2021. The Green/Blue lines station at East 79th is also in disrepair but with no major construction planned.

END

Cleveland's first Modernist tower to be remodeled

Reflecting Terminal Tower from across the Jacobs Group-

owned lot, 55 Public Square could soon see its value rise

with its planned remodeling as well as the construction of 

Sherwin-Williams' massive new headquarters and research

complex on several neighboring parking lots (Google).

CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE

As owner Optima Management Group describes their property, 55 Public Square is a "Class B office building in a Class A location."

That location is about to get even valuable with a planned $73.6 million remodeling of the former headquarters of The Cleveland Electric Illuminating Co., now a part of First Energy. When the 24-story office building opened in 1958, it was Cleveland's first glass curtain wall skyscraper.

The building's value will certainly increase further with Sherwin-Williams (SHW) reportedly selecting neighboring properties for its massive new headquarters plus research and development (HQ+R&D) facilities.

At least two other neighboring buildings in downtown's Warehouse District are under contract with prospective buyers who intend to renovate them and capitalize on the proximity of SHW's HQ+R&D project. However, their buyers said they weren't yet ready to publicly reveal their acquisitions or intentions.

To help finance 55 Public Square's remodeling, Optima applied to the Ohio Development Services Agency (ODSA) for a maximum $5 million tax credit from the Ohio Historic Preservation Tax Credit Program, according to a source who wasn't permitted to speak publicly about the renovation project or the tax credit application for it.

The Brilliant Electric Sign Co., then of Hough
Avenue in Cleveland, places holiday decora-
tions on the new Cleveland Electric Illumina-
ting Co. headquarters in 1959 (Press).

The Fall 2019 tax credit application period, also called Round 23, began in August. Applications are being reviewed by ODSA until Dec. 1. Approved applications are scheduled to be announced on or before Dec. 31, the OSDA web site shows. Buildings that are 50 years old or older qualify for historic tax credits.

According to documents submitted to OSDA by Optima, the $73.6 million renovation includes replacing the office tower's exterior surfaces, called the envelope, comprised of glass and steel panels as well as metal framing.

The project also involves remodeling the basement, upper two mechanical floors 23, 24 and tenant improvements on floors 1-6 and 18. That represents 40 percent or 195,474 square feet of the 480,000-square-foot building.

The restaurant wing at the corner of West 3rd Street and Frankfort Avenue, as well as the six-level parking deck on the corner of West 3rd and St. Clair Avenue are not part of the renovation, the application documents show. John Q's Steakhouse, originally owned by the Stouffer's chain, operated in the restaurant wing from 1959 to 2013.

It's apparent that Optima Management Group is moving forward with the renovation project regardless of OSDA's decision. Through an affiliate, Optima 55 Public Square LLC, the owner is soliciting for bids from construction firms to carry out the remodeling work, the source said.

This postcard was printed shortly after
55 Public Square, then called the Illu-
minating Building, opened in 1958 for
the utility (Cleveland Memory Project).

Although 55 Public Square started a post-war building boom of Modernist towers in downtown Cleveland, that boom was delayed. The electric utility's new home was built 13 years after the end of World War II and three decades after downtown's previous skyscraper was completed -- the Terminal Tower.

Built in the International Style according to the principles of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, 55 Public Square was designed by Carson Lundin & Shaw Architects. It is 300 feet tall and has 20,000-square-foot floorplates.

According to commercial real estate brokerage Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL), 55 Public Square is 57 percent vacant. That's the fourth-highest vacancy rate among downtown Cleveland office buildings, trailing only the Ellipse (45 Erieview), Superior Building (815 Superior) and the Western Reserve Building (1468 W. 9th). The average vacancy rate for Class B buildings downtown is 33 percent.

The tired-looking tower's high vacancy has persisted in spite of an asking price of only $17 per square foot, or $1.26 below the average Class B asking price downtown. Class B office space, which is a lower-quality product than Class A or Trophy class (but higher than Class C), represents slightly more than half of downtown's 15 million square feet of office inventory, JLL says.

55 Public Square was built on the site of Cuyahoga
County's courthouse (1858-1912) seen at far left,
above. Next to it was the 1915-built headquarters
of the Cleveland Electric Illuminating Co. which
still stands at 75 Public Square. This photo dates
from about 1920 (Cleveland Memory Project).

Two years ago, the City of Cleveland seriously considered leasing a significant portion of 55 Public Square for its new Cleveland Police Department headquarters. However, substantial facility and security changes were needed and the city began looking elsewhere.

Last year, local real estate developer K&D began the process to buy the aging office tower from Optima and convert its lower half to apartments. But K&D withdrew after taking a harder look at the cost of renovations versus projected revenues.

Optima Management Group, run by Chaim Schochet, acquired 55 Public Square in 2008 for $34 million during a recessionary buying spree in which his firm snapped up a half-dozen Cleveland towers. Optima since has sold all but two of those towers, 55 Public Square and One Cleveland Center, 1375 E. 9th St.

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900-1800 office jobs coming to Superior Arts District downtown

Plain Dealer Plaza at 1801 Superior Ave. is under contract to
sell to MinuteMen Staffing Services Inc. on or about Nov. 8 for
its new headquarters. MinuteMen is one of two fast-growing
companies moving to the Superior Arts District on downtown
Cleveland's east side (KJP). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE

Over the next couple of years, approximately 900 office jobs are due to arrive in the Superior Arts District. That number could double by the mid-2020s as two fast-growing companies are relocating their headquarters to this redeveloping area of Superior Avenue on the eastern edge of downtown Cleveland.

The new jobs would add to several hundred office workers already there.

In a matter of days, and barring any last-minute glitch, MinuteMen Staffing Services Inc. is due to take title to the former Plain Dealer Plaza office building, 1801 Superior Ave. Terms of the transaction have yet to be disclosed.

The staffing and workers compensation firm will renovate the newspaper's old offices for more than 400 corporate and administrative employees relocated from multiple locations. Its corporate HQ was located at MinuteMen Center, 3740 Carnegie Ave., since 1997.

MinuteMen President Jason Lucarelli said his company, with annual revenues surpassing $300 million, will expand into every state in the country. It currently has 26 offices in five states, according to Cleveland Magazine. MinuteMen was founded by Jason's father Samuel G. Lucarelli in 1968.

With the growth that his firm is pursuing, Lucarelli said he anticipates that MinuteMen will double its HQ employment in the coming years to 800. The former PD building measures 236,160 square feet which is more than enough to accommodate MinuteMen's projected expansion.

The ex-newspaper building was built in 2002 for $38 million and owned by the Forest City Publishing Co. In addition to the office building, the 8-acre site has 80,000 square feet of storage and 630 parking spots in a 1969-built parking deck south of St. Clair Ave., according to county records.

Corporate headquarters aren't the only real estate developments
coming to the Superior Arts District. This commercial building
at 2125 Superior is being renovated into 58 apartments as well
as a ground-floor, street-facing restaurant (KJP).

Although the PD relocated its editorial offices to Tower City Center and then to Brooklyn, Cleveland.com retains about 200 employees at 1801 Superior. Advance Ohio, the Council for Economic Opportunities in Greater Cleveland and the YMCA of Greater Cleveland also lease office space in the building. But most of the building is vacant.

The City of Cleveland was near to purchasing the property last year for the new Cleveland Police Department HQ. That move was nixed for reasons that the city has yet to disclose.

Disposition of the old MinuteMen Center, which dates from 1935 but was renovated in 1997, hasn't been determined. It may be put up for sale. Since it has yet to be put on the market, Midtown Cleveland Executive Director Jeff Epstein declined to comment on the future of the property.

His community development counterpart at Campus District Inc., Executive Director Mark Lammon, also declined comment on MinuteMen's pending purchase of 1801 Superior as the sale hasn't yet closed.

Additionally, he wasn't at liberty to discuss another pending HQ relocation to the Superior Arts District -- that of Brecksville-based CrossCountry Mortgage, LLC. Lammon declined comment because the fast-growing mortgage firm's plans haven't been formally announced.

CrossCountry's CEO Ron Leonhardt led a team of investors on Dec. 28, 2018 to buy a 6-acre block full of historic commercial buildings from Tap Packaging Inc., formerly the Chilcote Co. The buildings were constructed between 1910 and 1940, Cuyahoga County records show.

Multiple historic buildings southeast of the
intersection of Superior and East 21st are
due to be renovated into the new corporate
headquarters for CrossCountry Mortgage,
currently located in Brecksville (KJP).

The six-acre block is bounded by Superior, East 21st and East 22nd streets, plus Payne Avenue. All 16 of the parcels in that block were bought by CC Superior Holding LLC for $849,500, according to county records.

In recent media reports, Leonhardt said CrossCountry, founded in 2003, could see its HQ staff grow to 1,000 employees in five years. His company has already outgrown its 50,000-square-foot HQ on Miller Road in Brecksville. For this article, Leonhardt did not respond to questions posed to him in an e-mail. He acknowledged receipt of the e-mail, however.

A real estate development source said that, between MinuteMen, CrossCountry, Cleveland.com, Hotcards, LLC and real estate firm GBX Group LLC, the Superior Arts District could exceed 1,200 daytime employees in a couple of years. With future growth, that figure could surpass 2,000 jobs in several more years.

Residential, restaurant and retail development in the Superior Arts District are growing too. For $12 million, Developer Bobby George is renovating a vacant, 59,000-square-foot commercial building at 2125 Superior into 58 apartments over an as-yet unidentified cafe that plans to serve breakfast and lunch. The property is next door to GBX's offices at Superior and East 21st.

More residential developments are planned in the immediate neighborhood, but aren't far enough along in the development process for the source to provide further details publicly. That could include a property acquisition that occurred as part of Leonhardt's Dec. 28, 2018 transaction.

In it, Leonhardt and his unidentified partners transferred by quit-claim deed five properties along the east side of East 22nd, north of Payne, to 2130 Superior Avenue, LLC, county records show.

That firm is an affiliate of BEK Developers, LLC, of Beachwood. BEK is an acronym for the first names of Bob Risman, his wife Eleanor and their daughter Kathy Risman -- part of one of wealthiest families in Greater Cleveland.

Their proposed development, rumored to be a residential project, hasn't been announced. But, when combined with the ground-floor restaurant and retail offerings likely to appear along the sidewalk in CrossCountry's HQ development, it is clear that this neighborhood is about to become much more active.

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Rivian looking more likely to buy & use Cleveland-area Ford plants

More information is pointing to electric vehicle manufacturer
Rivian as the possible buyer of both of Greater Cleveland's
vacant Ford plants. This is Rivian's headquarters, located in
the Detroit suburb of Plymouth, MI (Rivian).
CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM

Several thousand new, well-paying jobs appear to be bound for Greater Cleveland which could become a hotbed of Electric Vehicle (EV) production for many years to come. That's based on recent news and tips from a couple of insider sources.

In a NEOtrans article posted Sept. 23, I speculated that EV startup Rivian may be the likely buyer of two Cleveland-area plants mothballed by Ford Motor Co. One is the 1.7-million-square-foot Brook Park Engine Plant No. 2 that closed in 2000 and the other is the 2.1-million-square-foot Walton Hills Stamping Plant that closed in 2015.

That speculation could be a realistic outcome considering several recent developments.

A source familiar with the two factories said that Ford is going through the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Voluntary Action Program (VAP) for the vacant Walton Hills plant. The VAP process would start by the end of this year or early next year for the Brook Park Engine Plant No. 2. An Ohio EPA spokesman confirmed this.

The VAP process starts when a property owner submits environmental data for Ohio EPA to review and determine if any environmental contamination exists and needs to be cleaned. Afterwards, if the property is found to be clean enough to meet Ohio EPA standards, the property owner would receive a covenant not to sue.

Ohio EPA says this covenant protects the property owner or operator and future owners from being legally responsible to the State of Ohio for further investigation and cleanup. For the subject of this article, it is important to note this protection applies only when the property is used and maintained in the same manner as when the covenant was issued.

In other words -- these are still auto manufacturing plants, albeit vacant, and would remain as auto plants. Furthermore, the source said Ford doesn't intend to demolish the vehicle production-related structures on these properties. The source didn't reveal the buyer. The Ohio EPA spokesman said Ford didn't reveal the buyer to them either.

However, the source said that Ford wanted to get the VAP process done quickly because the buyer for both plants is on a timeline.

Ford's 1.7-million-square-foot Brook Park Engine Plant No. 2
(above) that closed in 2000 and Ford's Walton Hills Stamping
Plant (below) that closed in 2015 (Google).

So if the two properties would continue to produce new vehicles or parts for vehicles under the new ownership, who would the buyer be? Ford wouldn't sell to a competitor. Instead, it would likely be a firm with whom Ford has a partnership.

Volkswagen is one possibility. Ford and VW announced in January that they are joining forces on delivering medium-sized pickups for global customers starting in 2022. But the production facility for that has already been identified. It will be in Chattanooga, TN.

Then in July, Ford and VW expanded their partnership to include equal investments in Argo AI, an autonomous vehicle platform firm with dual headquarters in Munich, Germany and Pittsburgh, PA.

But the scale of Argo AI's facilities for producing software and computing equipment will likely be much smaller than two auto plants totaling nearly 4 million square feet. And multiple reports say a single buyer will acquire both of Greater Cleveland's two vacant Ford plants.

That brings us to Rivian.

The start-up EV manufacturer has developed a revolutionary electric engine and vehicle frames. Rivian's engines offer remarkable performance of 0-60 mph in three seconds and fossil fuel-competitive ranges of 400 miles or more per charge.

Rivian's flexible frames will be used not only in its vehicles but also in Ford's new EV products. Ford was so impressed with Rivian that it invested $500 million in the start-up firm which has yet to mass-produce any vehicles. Rivian has acquired a former Mitsubishi factory outside of Normal, IL and expects to begin mass production of EV pickups and SUVs in 2020.

But that doesn't address Ford's desire for mass quantities of Rivian's so-called "skateboard platform" vehicle frames (the chassis looks like a skateboard) for its as-yet-unidentified new EV line. Nor does it take into account Amazon's order to Rivian for $10 billion worth of electrically powered delivery trucks.

To consider the scale of production facilities needed, the 3.7-million-square-foot Ford Avon Lake, OH plant produces 370 truck chassis a day. That's 128,000 to 135,000 chassis per year. That's just chassis.

Rivian acquired and re-tooled a 2.6-million-square-foot
former Mitsubishi plant near Normal, IL where it will
produce its first two vehicle lines. But that doesn't take
into account where it will manufacture enough frames
for Ford's new line of electric vehicles that may be
produced at new facilities in Avon Lake (Rivian).

Speaking of Avon Lake, Ford and the United Auto Workers announced Nov. 1 a $900 million investment to expand the factory to accommodate a product line that would create more than 1,500 permanent jobs for Greater Cleveland.

This week, Crain's Cleveland Business reported that the product line would be Ford's new but unidentified EV -- likely the product line that would use Rivian's skateboard platform.

"Ford intends to develop a new vehicle using Rivian’s flexible skateboard platform," Ford said in a written statement released in April when it announced its investment in Rivian. "This is in addition to Ford’s existing plans to develop a portfolio of battery electric vehicles" including a Mustang-inspired crossover and a zero-emission version of the F-150 pickup.

Ford's investment represents a little less than a 10 percent stake in Rivian. As part of the deal, Joe Hinrichs, Ford’s president of Automotive, will join Rivian’s seven-member board.

"I think we have a winner with the Rivian pick" to buy the two Ford plants, said a business investor with ties to Greater Cleveland who is familiar with Rivian. "If in fact Rivian takes the two Cleveland plants from Ford, I'd bet the payment will be some form of equity."

Putting Rivian's chassis production facilities and Ford's new EV production facility close to each other probably makes logistical sense. Also, it is interesting to note that Ford's facilities in Walton Hills, Brook Park, Avon Lake and even Rivian's Normal plant are all on Norfolk Southern Corp. rails, simplifying the production process.

Greater Cleveland appears to have the inside lane on the future of automotive technology -- EV production -- because it has two large, mothballed, yet well-maintained auto-making facilities in close proximity to each other. And it has a workforce that knows how to build stuff, especially cars.

It is rare for a region to get a large, closed automotive plant back up and running, let alone two.

END