Bridgeworks seeks to add more height

A revised conceptual rendering of the proposed Bridgeworks
development at the northwest corner of the intersection of
West 25th Street and the Detroit-Superior Bridge in Ohio
City's Hingetown neighborhood. This view looks east
with downtown in the distance (MASS/LDA).
CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM

UPDATED FEB. 13, 2021

Plans for the Bridgeworks development in Ohio's City Hingetown neighborhood have been dramatically changed. Gone is the plan to build a seven-story hotel next to the residential portion of what was to be an 11-story building.

The new plan is to build the hotel atop the residential structure, bringing the combined height of the proposed Bridgeworks building to total of 18 stories and 200 feet. That would put it just shy of the 19-story, 208-foot-tall Lakeview Tower, 2700 Washington Ave., built in 1973 on the other side of the Shoreway highway.

It would also begin to create a skyline for Hingetown which also has the 2005-built, 12-story Stonebridge Towers Apartments, 2222 Detroit Ave., and the 11-story Church+State development that opened last year at 1436 Church and State Way.

The city's zoning code allows a building of up to 250 feet tall at the proposed site on the northwest corner of West 25th Street and the Detroit-Superior Bridge. Replacing the hotel at the back of the Bridgeworks building is an above-ground parking garage hidden by screening. Previously, a more costly, subterranean, two-level, 180-space parking garage was proposed below the structure.

A dawn view of the proposed Bridgeworks tower on West 25th
with St. Malachi Church visible at left (MASS/LDA).

The development team that built Church+State -- Grammar Properties and M. Panzica Development -- is pursuing Bridgeworks. And they're pursuing this bigger tower for a big reason -- revenue opportunities.

"We're excited about it and think it makes for a more dynamic and marketable project," said development partner Michael Panizica.

He said that the goal is to get shovels in the ground for the project by the end of summer with an 18- to 24-month construction timeline. That suggests the project's financing is coming into focus although Panzica wouldn't discuss such details.

Last November a request for qualifications (RFQ) was issued by Newmark Valuation & Advisory for the hotel portion of Bridgeworks. Proposed is a branded lifestyle hotel. Prospective hotel operators had to respond to the RFQ by Nov. 30.

The new Bridgeworks conceptual plan takes the proposed hotel
from the back of the building along old Superior Viaduct and
puts it on top, making the project more marketable to poten-
tial hotel operators and making the project eligible for a
new megaproject tax credit program (MASS/LDA).

Putting the hotel above the residential makes it more marketable to potential hotel operators. However, no operator has reportedly been signed and no prospective flag has been identified. Neither is likely until after conceptual plans are approved by the city. Thus, Panzica said it was premature to discuss details regarding the hotel.

Ohio City's Design Review Committee is scheduled to get an opportunity to review and comment on the revised plans for Bridgeworks at its next meeting on Feb. 18. Mass Design Group of Boston and LDA architects Inc. of Cleveland comprise the project's design team. New York City-based Turner Construction Co. is the project's general contractor.

Bridgeworks is proposed to be a 230,000-plus-square-foot, mixed-use development consisting with 167-170 mixed-income units, a roughly 130-room hotel, 2,000 square feet of ground floor commercial space and the parking garage. The scale of the project is similar to the previous design, only more vertical.

The 2-acre site includes several historical buildings from its prior life as the Cuyahoga County Engineers' offices, laboratory and garage. Plus it has an entry building for the former streetcar subway on the lower level of the Detroit-Superior Bridge. Some of those may be repurposed to residential and hotel amenity uses although the 1960-built Engineers' lab/offices would be demolished, plans show.  

Plans for Bridgeworks show a public plaza and restaurant at the
corner of West 25th and Detroit-Superior Bridge (MASS/LDA). 

An historic designation was awarded for the Cuyahoga County Engineers' buildings last September that would make their renovation eligible for historic tax credits. The amount of those credits would probably be too small to make a significant contribution to the developers' capital stack.

But by increasing the project's height above 15 stories, Bridgeworks may also be eligible for a Transformational Mixed-Use Development (TMUD) tax credit if the total value of the project is more than $50 million. Given the scale of the project, it is likely to be in excess of that.

TMUD is a new state program that is already generating significant interest among real estate developers seeking to invest in large-scale projects in Cleveland and other large Ohio cities with populations above 100,000.

When first proposed, Bridgeworks started out with a proposed height in the six- to eight-story range. It was then bumped up to 11 stories last fall and now would provide an even more significant vertical presence on the west end of the Detroit-Superior Bridge, offering lofty views of downtown and Lake Erie.

The revised site plan shows the location on the right where the
hotel was previously proposed. In its place is an above-ground
parking garage lined with six micro-commercial spaces along
Superior Viaduct to provide a low-cost place for new
businesses to get their start (MASS/LDA).

Tyler Kapusta contributed to this article.

END

Warehouse District building conversion to start

The Liberty Textiles Building, 1277 W. 6th St., has sat vacant
for more than 30 years. But life will finally be returned to this
ornate, 147-year-old building with 20 apartments plus com-
mercial spaces on the ground floor and basement. Less
certain is the future of a proposed development to be
located on the parking lot at right (Google).
CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM

It's been three decades in the making but redevelopment work is finally about to begin at the Liberty Textiles Building, 1277 W. 6th St. in downtown Cleveland's Warehouse District. The possibility of a planned, larger building rising on the parking lot next door is less certain, however.

Interior demolition work may start by the end of March on the historic structure to prepare it for rehabilitation. Renovation work would follow soon thereafter, said a source close to the project but who wasn't authorized to speak publicly about it.

An interior demolition permit application was submitted last week to the city by Joe Kasouff, doing business as KRA Management and whose offices are located nearby along West 6th in the Kassouff-owned historic Johnson Block. Kasouff didn't respond to an e-mail seeking more information prior to publication of this article.

The permit references that the upper three floors of the building will be renovated with 20 market-rate apartments but a separate permit will be required for the rehabilitation work. Apartments are planned owing to the difficulty in getting financing for a previously sought boutique hotel or downtown condominiums.

"The Liberty Textiles Building is a four-story masonry and wood building constructed in 1874 in the Cleveland warehouse historic district," reads a development summary included with the permit application. "(The) project will be completed in two phases. Phase one will consist of selective demolition, site investigation and discovery."

"Phase two will consist of remediation, restoration, change of use and interior build-out," the application continues. "The proposed renovation will convert the existing structure to a mixed-use building consisting of commercial space on the first and basement levels and residential units on all levels. The façade will be restored including restoration of the existing first-floor storefront, replacement on the existing windows on floors 2-4 and reconstruction of a cornice."

View and location of the Liberty Textiles
Building as shown in KRA Management's
permit application to the city (Berardi).

The ground floor and basement measure 5,334 and 5,201 square feet, respectively. Floors 2-4 each measure 5,314 square feet. All told, the Liberty Textiles Building totals 26,477 square feet of usable space. 

However, renovation of the existing building is only part of what Kassouf has proposed here. He also plans a new, four-story, 60-unit apartment building above a two-level parking garage on the parking lot his family owns next door, 1299 W. 6th St.

With the historic renovation and new construction taken together, the project would represent an investment of about $25.3 million, according to a filing with the Ohio Development Services Agency.

The source said Kassouf is still working to secure financing for the new apartment building over the parking garage but has enough resources to start renovating the historic Liberty Textiles Building.

Kassouf has secured more than $10 million for the renovation including an $8.055 million Huntington Bank loan that his 1277 West Sixth Street LLC received on Feb. 28, 2020, county records show. Funding also includes $1.996 million in Ohio Historic Preservation Tax Credits awarded to the project in June 2017.

Evolution Construction Services LLC of Mentor will conduct the interior demolition. The permit application shows the firm will remove all existing construction, finishes, plus mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems as required for implementation of the newly planned uses and finishes.

The Liberty Textiles Building is one of the last vacant,
historic structures still awaiting rehabilitation in
downtown's Historic Warehouse District (Google).

All fixtures and equipment removed will be consigned to the project's general contractor, Mentor-based Cleveland Construction Inc., for reuse as salvaged materials or disposal, per KRA Management's interior demolition application.

All interior doors, light fixtures, built cabinetry and other items considered salvageable during construction will be stored and reused by the general contractor. Cleveland Construction is noted for its historic renovations, including the 2016 rehabilitation of the Schofield Building at Euclid Avenue and East 9th Street. 

The project's architect is Berardi + Partners Inc. of Columbus with I.A. Lewin & Associates of Cleveland as the structural engineer, and WHS Engineers of Cleveland as the systems engineer, the filing with the city shows.

In the 19th century, the building was called the Carpenter Brothers Block, according to a Sanborn Fire Insurance Map of 1886. It was used for boot and shoe manufacturing which had expanded into buildings next door on Bank Street (as West 6th was called before 1905) and behind on Academy Street (now West 4th Street). There also was a tobacco factory on site.

Liberty Textiles was founded in 1919 and located at 1277 W. 6th until the Goldberg family sold the building on New Year's Eve 1987 and moved their business to 5600 S. Marginal Rd. in Cleveland. Liberty Textiles remains in business to this day; Marvin Goldberg has owned it since 1960, according to Ohio Secretary of State records.

Kasouff's father, James, acquired the building for $345,000 under the name Prime Properties Limited Partnership. He quit-claim deeded it to 1277 West Sixth Street LLC in November 2015, county records show. The building's façade was cosmetically cleaned up more than a decade ago but the building has remained vacant since Liberty Textiles moved out.

James Kassouf was pardoned by former President Donald Trump in the waning days of his administration for a 1989 tax case. The longtime real estate developer and parking lot owner had pled guilty to one count of filing a false tax return.

Tyler Kapusta contributed to this article.

END

First new multi-family housing in a century planned on Clark Ave.

Alta Villa Flats 50-unit apartment building is proposed
to rise at the northwest corner of Clark Avenue and West
32nd Street in Cleveland's Clark-Fulton neighborhood.
This and the planned Pilsener Square Apartments
will begin to address the neighborhood's short-
age of quality, affordable housing (RDL).

Clark Avenue is one of those strange streets in Cleveland with an odd mix of buildings.

It has a lot of older structures. On the sidewalks are storefronts and taverns topped by a few apartments. There's a scattering of light industrial buildings from the 1800s and early 1900s. And then there's all those newer single-use buildings -- mostly fast-food restaurants and small-box stores -- set back behind lots of pavement and empty parking spaces.

One land use that Clark doesn't have are large, multi-story, multi-family residential buildings. That's despite the fact the neighborhood is growing in population and is one of the city's most ethnically diverse.

But that lack of dense housing could change in a few years because of two planned multi-family housing developments. One would convert the former Pilsener Brewing Co. Bottle Works, 6605 Clark, into 39 apartments called Pilsener Square. The other would build a new 50-unit apartment complex on 1 acre of mostly vacant land at the northwest corner of Clark and West 32nd Street called Alta Villa Flats.

If built, both would be the largest housing developments on Clark. The Alta Villa Flats development at 3120 Clark would be the first multi-family residential structure built on Clark since the 1920s, city building records show.

The neighborhood's diversity includes a large and growing Latinx segment and an increasing number of African-Americans, along with a significant number of Central and Eastern European immigrant descendants, according to an October 2019 Clark-Fulton Target Area Plan by the Ohio Housing Finance Agency (OHFA).

The International Village mural on the west wall of the City Bank
Building at Clark Avenue and West 25th Street (OHFA).

That plan is part is part of a new initiative by OHFA to create mixed-income, diverse and accessible communities in Ohio’s three largest cities. It was begun in 2018, the 50th anniversary of the Fair Housing Act.

In public meetings conducted at the start of OHFA's planning, surveys showed housing was the number-one priority for neighborhood residents. 

"A number of suggestions were solicited, such as developing incentives to encourage the redevelopment of vacant structures and also assisting existing homeowners with repairs and energy efficiency upgrades," the report said. "Aggressive code enforcement by the city was also recommended. Given the strength of the market and a growing need for affordable housing, developing additional affordable housing was a top priority of many residents."

Metro West Community Development Organization is sponsoring both of the apartment building developments. It is partnering with Marous Brothers Construction Co. to redevelop the Pilsener Brewing Co. Bottle Works. And it is partnering with The Community Builders Inc. to construct Alta Villa Flats.

On Feb. 1, the Board of Zoning Appeals unanimously approved all of the variances requested by Community Builders to move forward with Alta Villa Flats. Developer's representatives said they could not secure financing, including Low Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC), without the variances.

Location, site plan, potential materials and landscaping for the
proposed Alta Villa Flats at 3120 Clark Ave. (RDL/PAB).

The property's zoning -- general retail and two-family housing -- hadn't changed since 1929, said Margaret Kavourias, project architect at RDL Architects. Furthermore, the 60,383-square-foot apartment building proposed for the 1-acre site has roughly three times the density that's permitted in the zoning code.

"We've identified a need for new and more affordable housing in this area," said Cleveland City Planner Matt Moss. "City Planning Commission would like to rezone the area for more housing."

The site is comprised of seven parcels. The lot at the corner has a former used-car dealership with a still-occupied house behind it. Metro West has a purchase agreement with property owners Hani K. and Samira H. Ziadeh.

Not only was the ancient zoning inappropriate for the proposed apartment building, so was the city's parking requirements. Major cities are increasingly adopting parking maximums. Cleveland still has parking minimums and the minimum for a development of this size on this lot is 50 off-street spaces. A representative of the national developer that has been building mixed-income developments for 60 years said 25 spaces are plenty for a mixed-income apartment building like this.

"We have found through our operational team that, very often, mixed-income housing tends to be overparked because many of our residents cannot afford cars," said Nicole Boyer, senior development project manager at The Community Builders. The firm is America's largest nonprofit developer of urban mixed-income housing.

Proposed site for Community Builders' new four-story apartment
building would eradicate this house and a vacant lot used most
recently as a used-car dealership (KJP).

She said their tenants often depend on public transportation to reach their jobs and walk to nearby shopping. Community Builders also likes to locate their projects within close proximity to employment centers such as the new $1 billion MetroHealth Medical Center, Boyer added.

"Our historic data has shown that parking ratios of anywhere from 50 to 60 percent of the overall unit count are more than sufficient and often times those parking spaces are still underutilized," she said. "We think that the close proximity to the bus line on Clark Avenue which connects to some of the more prominent Rapid (transit) lines in Cleveland is a really great amenity for our residents."

The Alta Villa Flats development will also feature a covered bicycle parking area and have a Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority bus stop in front of the new apartment building.

Following a systemwide redesign by the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority, the bus route that is tentatively proposed to operate on Clark starting in June will be the No. 25 bus, starting at Public Square downtown, traveling through Ohio City, Tremont, Steelyard Commons, Clark, Madison Avenue and ending at the Westgate Transit Center in Rocky River. It is proposed to operate every 30 minutes throughout the day.

Metro West is also pursuing a district-wide parking plan for the neighborhood, said Ricardo León, executive director of the community development corporation. When implemented, that plan would allow for shared parking with other lots to absorb possible parking overflow and guest parking.

Plenty of underutilized parking areas exist along Clark Avenue
including this one for an auto parts store across the street from
the site of the proposed Alta Villa Flats (Google).

"We've found that only 30 percent of parking in the area is used," said León.

Community Builders will also construct a pocket park due to what León called "a lack of robust greenspace in the neighborhood." He said there is a potential for a lighted play area and landscaping features like a sculpture that kids can climb on. On-site management will be provided by Community Builders.

Construction timeline for the roughly $15 million Alta Villa Flats depends on when financing is awarded. Boyer said that construction would start roughly one year after all of the project's funding is secured. Although a neighborhood's design-review committee approved the project's conceptual design, the more refined designs by RDL Architects won't be submitted for approval until after the funding is in hand.

Meanwhile, last May, Cleveland's City Planning Commission and City Council awarded landmark status to the historic Pilsener Brewing Co. Bottle Works to help it win historic tax credits and LIHTCs. With those funds, the sturdy brick and masonry building would be converted into the Pilsener Square Apartments.

However, the $12.27 million project missed out on opportunities to win a $817,050 competitive New Affordability tax credit from OHFA last year. There were 11 applicants in Cuyahoga County alone; OHFA funded four of them in 2020. Pilsener Square sponsors are reapplying for 2021 awards. Historic tax credit applications are still pending.

What the southwest corner of Clark Avenue and West
65th Street looked like 107 years ago when the Bottle
Works building (at right with the P.O.C. sign on it)
was brand-new. The Pilsener Brewing Co. building
at the corner has since been replaced with a Dollar
Store and the building at left is a vacant lot (CPC).

Financing for the project will include low-income housing tax credit equity, OHFA's Housing Development Assistance Program, permanent mortgage, Federal Home Loan Bank's Affordable Housing Program funds, Cleveland Housing Trust Fund, federal HOME Investment Partnership block grants administered by Cuyahoga County plus a deferred developer fee, according to Pilsener Square's proposal summary.

The 53,550-square-foot Bottle Works was added in 1914 to the Pilsener Brewing Co.'s sprawling plant at Clark and West 65th Street, called Pilsener Square. The brewery was started in 1892 and expanded rapidly with additional structures that are no longer standing except the Bottle Works. The company which brewed P.O.C. beer and other once-popular brands closed in 1984.

Two upper levels of the structure could be used for apartments averaging about 900 square feet each. Indoor parking and residents' amenities such as a community room, laundry facilities, resident lounge and atrium are proposed mostly on the lower level which is below street level next to Clark. On the south side of the street, the land slopes downward away from Clark. 

The name "Pilsener" comes from the Czech city of Pilsen, where the light Bohemian lager beer was first made. Just southeast of Pilsen is where the brewery's founder, Wenzel Medlin, was born -- Mecichov, South Bohemia, Czech Republic, in 1849.

Tyler Kapusta contributed to this article.

END

Mid-rise apartment complex planned for Gordon Square

A significant mixed-use development is proposed on Detroit Avenue
in Cleveland's Gordon Square neighborhood by a well-funded de-
veloper without a lot of development credits to its name (Dimit).
CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM

A proposed major mixed-use development in the Gordon Square area is due to go before City Planning Commission as early as this month. The development, called Waverly & Oak, at 5506 Detroit Ave., is the first major new-construction effort by Cleveland-based Bond Street Group.

But don't let that kid you into thinking this firm doesn't have the juice to pull off an ambitious project whose estimated cost would be in the tens of millions of dollars. Consider the principals behind Bond Street Group, incorporated in 2014 -- Todd Leebow, Taylor Hawkins and Justin Strizzi.

Leebow is president and CEO of Majestic Steel, a privately owned Bedford Heights manufacturer of flat-rolled steel founded in 1979 with revenues of $520 million in 2019. But he is probably more famous for being a friend of basketball star LeBron James and a passionate Cavs fan.

Hawkins is a senior vice president and principal at Cleveland-based Bellwether Enterprise Real Estate Capital, LLC -- a fast-growing commercial financier. Strizzi is director of real estate at Majestic Steel and handles much of the public relations work at Bond Street Group.

Eighteen months of construction could start this summer for the seven-story, 122-unit apartment building over 16,000 square feet of commercial space, including a restaurant, fitness center and co-working facility with memberships available to the public. Below it, an underground parking structure with more than 100 spaces is proposed, according to a project brief made available to NEOtrans.

Birdseye view of the property on which Waverly & Oak could
see construction as early as this summer (Bond Street Group).

"The project will include new exterior public space and expansive sidewalks along Detroit Avenue to encourage pedestrian traffic and public gathering," the brief reads. "The central courtyard may be used for public events such as farmers' markets and art walks."

Strizzi said Waverly & Oak is a working name for the project while the developers work on branding during the design process. The name is a play on the naming evolution of West 58th Street -- called Waverly Avenue and Oakland Street before the city renamed north-south streets numerically in 1905. The project was previously dubbed the Gordon House.

Because the project's details are preliminary, some of the designs and features could change based on public input, Strizzi said. The developer's first significant interaction with the public was a meeting held Feb. 3 via a Zoom video conference with nearby property owners, businesses and other stakeholders. The call was hosted by Ward 15 Councilwoman Jenny Spencer.

In that meeting, several stakeholders raised questions about parking, whether amenities will be accessible to residents and a construction timeline, according to two meeting participants who did not wish to be identified publicly. A couple of people on the call commented positively about the quality of the materials proposed for use in the development.

Strizzi said the project's Web presence is due to go live at about noon today on the CoUrbanize Web site where members of the community can provide input on the project and ask questions. The site soon will also have information about commercial space availability, residential pre-leasing and memberships. The project's web address will be waverlyandoak.info.

Conceptual view of the proposed development, as seen from
the north side from Tilman Avenue. The presence of so many
balconies is to provide residents on the north and east sides
of the complex with downtown and lake views (Dimit).

"This section of Detroit Avenue in Gordon Square is the ideal location to deliver on our vision for residential development," Strizzi said in an e-mailed statement. "Waverly & Oak residents and members will enjoy incredibly thoughtful design and engineering inside and out, at every detail, and when they walk outside, they’ll have all of the amenities of the neighborhood – restaurants, bars, theatres, retail shops – at their doorstep."

"Our vision is to restore and modernize the dynamic character of Gordon Square, created by a decades-long interweaving of art and industry that has made it the home and workplace of choice for the region’s creatives, and the city’s makers and movers,” added Leebow, Bond Street’s founder.

Leebow is also the founder of Cleveland-based Kind of One Concepts Hospitality Group, which plans to operate a restaurant and rooftop lounge in the new building, according to a written statement from Bond Street.

"Our conversations with the developer of this project are in the early stages," said Adam Stalder, executive director of the Detroit-Shoreway Community Development Organization. "DSCDO has encouraged them to start engaging the community earlier rather than later. Our goal as a community organization is to make sure that our stakeholders are aware and have a chance to weigh in on that future development."

Stalder was reluctant to call this project a next step up for Gordon Square which he said implies that new, market-rate, mostly-residential construction is somehow better than existing land uses. But he said it is a natural progression of development along Detroit Avenue.

"With the dense development of Ohio City’s Hingetown, it is only a matter of time until development fills in the gaps between that area and Gordon Square," Stalder added. "The desirability of the neighborhood and specifically the Gordon Square Arts District is leading to denser and taller buildings. We have seen this already at the Edison (on Father Caruso Drive). However, this is the first proposal along Detroit."

View of the development site from the corner of Detroit Avenue
and West 57th Street, looking easterly along Detroit. The two
buildings at the center of this image are to be razed (KJP).

Two buildings are proposed to be demolished for Waverly & Oak -- the Vietnam Market, 5506 Detroit, and the vacant Club Azteca, 5602 Detroit. Bond Street and former Club Azteca stakeholders began conversations in recent months on how the legacy and history of the club may be honored and acknowledged in the new project.  

The development site would measure 0.9 acres. All but one of the seven parcels to be acquired for the project are owned by Mayekar Familia, LLC, which in turn owns the Vietnam Market. It is surrounded by parking lots that extend back to Tillman Avenue.

Bond Street Group has a contract to buy this property. The sale price is unknown. It was listed for sale in mid-December for $1.5 million. The Vietnam Market will close; it will not relocate. But the Minh Anh restaurant next door isn't going anywhere.

The only parcel not owned by Mayekar Familia is occupied by the former Club Azteca. The nonprofit Mexican-American club has been at that site since 1952, according to Cuyahoga County records. Following a tax foreclosure, county records show the 0.106-acre property was acquired by the Cuyahoga County Land Reutilization Corp. on Oct. 21, 2020.

Bond Street's plans will be reviewed by the neighborhood's design-review committee as well as by the city's Landmarks Commission to secure a certificate of appropriateness to demolish the two buildings on the site.

According to the project's summary, the developer said it is focused on creating an attractive, community-centric mix of uses on the street level, bringing residential density to Detroit Avenue and filling in the "missing teeth" along Detroit created by the current surface parking lots and vacant building that sit on the site.

"Higher buildings are a natural desire for developers in this area to take advantage of the views of the lake and downtown," Stalder said. "This is the first but I am certain it won’t be the last."

Tyler Kapusta contributed to this article.

END

Fulton House development plan in Ohio City getting mixed reviews

A four-story, 20-unit apartment building is proposed to be built
atop and set back from a faded, historic building on Fulton Road
in Cleveland's Ohio City neighborhood. The project, called the
Fulton House, would have ground-floor retail (Horton Harper).

A small mixed-use development proposed on the site of Ohio City Brews on Fulton Road is getting some mixed reviews from the community. But the developers are confident that they can address many of the concerns.

If so, they hope to start construction this summer on a 20-unit apartment building atop an existing, 96-year-old building to be converted into two storefronts and parking. The project would freshen up and activate an underutilized, high-profile street corner in a densifying, vibrant urban neighborhood.

Local Development Partners, LLC (LDP) is pursuing Fulton House, 1828 Fulton. The $4.9 million project would be a five-story building with residences that are comprised entirely of one-bedroom apartments to meet the demand for such units.

Preliminary plans show the residences would range in size from 480 to 924 square feet, averaging 740 square feet. Twenty percent of the units will be affordable due to their reduced floor layouts, said LDP principal James Asimes (pronounced ah-sim-ez) in a phone interview. Asimes has lived in Ohio City for about seven years.

"I've been past that building a number of times and saw an opportunity to renovate an existing structure that activates its street presence and adds apartments," Asimes said. "It's a great corner when you look at what else is around it. That building deserves to be something better and in line with some of the other buildings in the neighborhood.

Site of the proposed Fulton House development. The black part
of the development is new construction while the dark-gray por-
tion is the existing commercial building to be renovated and re-
designed to provide new retailers and parking (Horton Harper). 

"We've tried to be thoughtful and respectful with this project," Asimes said. "I think some of the details of the project have been overlooked."

That includes the proposed apartment building pulled back from the edges of the historic building to reduce the scale and sheer walls above the sidewalks that exist at other mid-rise buildings in the neighborhood like the West Virginia Building or the West Side Community House.

Also, the use of specialty European wood for cladding the apartment building is a unique feature. A European supplier, Thermory, is looking to expand in the USA. They use a chemical-free process to treat wood. This would be the first building in the USA cladded with this product, Asimes said.

"The area at Woodbine and Fulton that's now used as a trash collection area and parking would be turned into an attractive patio and gathering space," he added. "We saw that when the picnic tables were put out in front of the old firehouse on West 29th, it made that into a de facto gathering space. We hope to do something similar here."

The ground floor would have two retail spaces, one tentatively measuring 1,708 square feet and the other 459 square feet, as well as eight indoor parking spaces. There will also be three new on-street parking spaces availed by cutting into the sidewalk along Woodbine Avenue.

The proposed Fulton House apartments would feature numerous
balconies on the upper floors as well as a small public patio at
the corner of Fulton and Woodbine. These and other features
of the development would add to vibrancy and safety of the
area by putting more eyes on the street (Horton Harper).

Vehicular entry to the indoor parking would be via an existing curb cut on West 31st Place. The outdoor patio, regardless of whether a restaurant or café locates on the ground floor, would be provided at the northwest corner of Fulton and Woodbine.

"It (the patio) would be a great benefit to a potential tenant," Asimes noted.

Apartments will feature luxury finishes, stainless-steel appliances and engineered wood floors, according to a project summary. Floor layouts will provide eat-in kitchens and in-suite laundries. Bathrooms will have tiled floors, tiled showers and oversized vanities. Eighty percent of the units will have outdoor balconies, each with enough space for a four-person dining table.

Preliminary plans show the five-story building would be 60 feet tall, between the heights of two nearby buildings -- the 54-foot-tall West Side Community House and the 62-foot-tall West Virginia Building. Originally, 1828 Fulton was built in 1925 with a storefront, gas station and service garage/warehouse.

Asimes is also director of acquisitions for the Realife Management Group based in downtown's Warehouse District. 

Height and scale comparisons with existing mid-rise buildings
in the Ohio City neighborhood (Horton Harper).

The developers have already combined their real estate abilities in several Cleveland-area projects, including in Ohio City. They are building the $5 million Harbor 44 development, now under construction at the southeast corner of Lorain Avenue and West 44th Street. That two-story-tall project was scaled back from its original four-story plan as a result of neighborhood feedback.

There, they razed the long-closed and decayed Ohio City Furniture for a 22,000-square-foot commercial development including a 7,200-square-foot Sherwin-Williams paint store, relocating from the now-razed Market Plaza to make way for the massive Intro development. A 4,800-square-foot ground-floor retail space is available. Upstairs, 10,000-plus square feet of office space is available for lease.

Fulton House is proposed as a 23,717-square-foot building. Retail tenants aren't nailed down yet, so it's too early to say if Ohio City Brews would return once the year-long construction is completed.

"We've had an initial conversation with them," Asimes said. "But we haven't come to anything definitive with them."

The developers chose to present Fulton House on the interactive real estate Web site CoUrbanize. Asimes said the goal was and is to get input from the community prior to and during reviews by the city.

The existing, 96-year-old building at 1828 Fulton that would be
built upon is in need of some serious TLC (Google).

Those reviews started Jan. 21 with the Ohio City Design Review Committee. That's where the community's reaction was mixed, said Tom McNair, executive director of Ohio City Inc. Concerns were expressed about the new building's scale and modern design affecting the historic charm of the area. But he noted that the project's plans are still very conceptual and subject to revision.

Next, the developers and their architect, Westleigh Harper, principal and co-founder of Horton Harper Architects of Cleveland, will present the project later this month at the city's Landmarks Commission.

"The existing building to remain with some changes to allow additional retail and a safer vehicular ingress (and the) new building built atop it," said Harper. "All the new facades, other than a portion of the West 31st face, will be setback from the perimeter of the existing structure."

The project must appear before the Landmarks Commission because the project is in an historic district and the building upon which Fulton House would rise is an historic building. McNair also said Ohio City Inc. will host a virtual forum on the project. There has been no block club vote on the project yet.

"Working with CoUrbanize is working out real nice in terms of information sharing," McNair said. "The developers are getting input to refine the plan. It's important to note that it's a preliminary plan. It's an initial proposal."

The addition of an outdoor patio, at left, located at the corner of
Fulton and Woodbine, would add new life to this Ohio City
neighborhood (Horton Harper).

LDP has a purchase agreement for the 0.159-acre parcel, owned since 1989 by Tom Hatzopoulos. The agreement would be executed if city approvals, including zoning variances, are granted.

Zoning for the property is currently two-family, with a 35-foot height limit and the structure's maximum gross floor area can be only one-half times the area of the lot. In other words, the existing commercial building doesn't conform to the city's zoning code either, McNair pointed out.

"The current use is not in the best interest of the community as it is a one-story building," he said. "But for Fulton House to be built as it is currently proposed, it would need a substantial number of variances."

The city's Board of Zoning Appeals is the panel responsible for hearing applications for building code variances. Such an application would follow a project review and vote by the Landmarks Commission.

"When we first started working with this project, we started talking with neighbors and the block club as part of the outreach program," Asimes said. "We wanted to be respectful of the process we were asked to follow."

END

Sherwin-Williams may not move into new HQ until 2025

The interior of Sherwin-Williams' new headquarters in downtown
Cleveland could be similar to that of Qualtrics Tower in Seattle.
The interior designer at SHW HQ architect Pickard Chilton
recently worked on the Seattle project. But SHW workers
won't see the finished product until after they move in
sometime in 2025, sources say (Centrel Imagery).
CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM

There's a mix of good and bad news coming out of the development team working on Sherwin-Williams' (SHW) new headquarters (HQ) in downtown Cleveland. Let's get the bad news out of the way first.

At the current rate of progress by the development team, SHW employees probably won't be able to move into the new HQ until sometime in 2025. That's nearly a year later than a revised schedule announced publicly last September. And even that was a revision from an earlier goal. SHW executives initially had hoped they would be able to move into their new HQ in late-2023.

The delayed move-in date is due to delays in the project's design. Only now is SHW's HQ development  team getting a better sense of a site plan. The HQ is planned to rise on a portion of 6.82 acres of SHW-owned land now used as parking lots on the west side of Public Square.

Now SHW's HQ development team has to lay out the programming of the structures starting with the base HQ tower. There won't be any renderings of the new HQ for internal review until this fall. And any designs may not be submitted to the city for public review until early 2022, sources said.

This reportedly is the site plan that SHW's HQ development team
is working with. Potentially comparable buildings designed by
Pickard Chilton, located in Oklahoma City, were used as
temporary placeholders here (KJP/Google).

They said that points to site preparations and foundations being dug in mid- to late-2022. Steel for the buildings will start going up in 2023. Although SHW employees wont be moving in until 2025, the sources said the HQ parking garage should be finished a year before.

But there's good news to share, too. Development team members informed NEOtrans that the new HQ is being designed to accommodate 3,500 employees. That's 500 more employees than are currently based in SHW's existing HQ (even though many are still working remotely for a little while longer).

SHW's total headcount will reportedly come from four locations/sources:

• About 3,000 workers from SHW's existing downtown Cleveland HQ offices in the Landmark and Skylight office buildings,
• Relocation of roughly 140 employees from SHW Automotive Division offices in Warrensville Heights,
• Relocation of 25 workers from SHW's Chicago Metro District Office in Schaumburg, IL, and
• Addition of approximately 240 employees through an 8 percent corporate growth factor.

On the upper floors of the Pickard Chilton-designed Qualtrics
Tower in Seattle, the offices are designed to foster interaction
while providing some privacy as well. Such concepts may
be incorporated into SHW's new HQ (Centrel Imagery).

These numbers may take the sting out of SHW's decision to move the John G. Breen Research Center from Canal Road in downtown Cleveland to Brecksville. The existing R&D center has about 300-400 jobs. Roughly 250 research jobs are being relocated from Warrensville Heights to Brecksville, too. Warrensville Heights is taking the brunt of SHW's corporation relocation decisions.

SHW's February 2020 press release initially proposed their employment at the new HQ and R&D facilities would be a total of 3,500 workers. So downtown Cleveland will actually see more jobs gained at the new HQ than it will lose from the relocation of SHW's R&D center.

A number of SHW facilities in Greater Cleveland will not be moving to either the new HQ or the new R&D center, according to development team sources. The facilities staying put include:

• Engineering Robotics Lab (Parma)
• Mock Store for training (Berea)
• Hinckley Parkway flex offices (Cleveland)
• Credit office (Brunswick)
• Midwest Division (Strongsville)
• PCG and East Area Office (Garfield Heights)
• Exposure Site (Medina) 
• Specialty Aerosols (Bedford)

The 22,000-square-foot Devon Energy Center Auditorium located in
downtown Oklahoma City reportedly is a comparable structure,
albeit smaller, to SHW's proposed Center of Excellence on
downtown Cleveland's Public Square (ArchDaily).

NEOtrans has reported on recent sample works of exterior designs by SHW HQ architect Pickard Chilton, namely in Oklahoma City. But little has been said here about the potential interior designs of the SHW HQ. Pickard Chilton recently finished up work at the new Qualtrics Tower in Seattle and the interior design staff from that project will be working on SHW's HQ, sources said.

SHW executives have directed the HQ development team to keep the interior aesthetics simple. The executives reportedly prefer an open floor plan for office staff with a lot more cubicles and a lot less enclosed offices. Although SHW wants to incorporate lots of color in the offices, executives don't want the building to exude arrogance either.

As reported previously, the 1-million-square-foot HQ tower will be a modern glass box, bearing a similarity to the exterior design of the 700,000-square-foot, 27-story BOK Park Plaza in Oklahoma City.

SHW's tower will be a little larger in terms of floorplates and height, reportedly reaching about 30-35 stories with about 14 to 15 feet per floor. Final height will depend on the interior design which is only getting started. Sources said the tower will rise on the northwest corner of Superior Avenue and West 3rd Street.

A modern glass box, similar to the BOK Park
Plaza tower in Oklahoma City is reportedly a
comparable building to what SHW wants in
downtown Cleveland (Pickard Chilton).

But the HQ tower will not have any "active uses" (ie: publicly accessible retail, restaurants or other commercial uses) on the ground floor, said HQ development team sources. The reason is that SHW is very security conscious. There will be a coffee shop and cafeteria on the second level of the HQ but will be for employees only.

Similarly, SHW's proposed new 50,000- to 80,000-square-foot Center of Excellence (CoE), to be located on the lot closest to Public Square, probably won't be open to the public either, the same sources said. Instead, it will be limited to SHW corporate meetings, training and tours by invitation only.

The CoE's so-called museum which illustrates SHW's 155-year history measures only 6,000-square-feet in SHW's current HQ on 101 W. Prospect Ave. It will likely retain that scale in the new CoE and continue its existing purpose -- for tours to job seekers, clients and VIPs.

SHW interviews 2,000-3,000 people per year for jobs. During their HQ visits, they are given a tour of the existing CoE. And when elected officials like mayors and governors visit, they are also given a CoE tour.

There apparently will be a publicly accessible part of the new HQ, but only because the city's building code requires it, sources said. The HQ's parking garage, to be located northwest of the Frankfort Avenue-West 3rd intersection, will have a store front on the ground level facing West 3rd. There will not any active uses along Frankfort which SHW's HQ development team considers to be an alley.

END

Cleveland's lakefront may get boost from new stadium, trains, ships

Several underutilized resources appear here. In the distance is Lake
Erie. Then there's First Energy Stadium that is used only about 10
times each year. The light-rail Waterfront Line ends in a parking
 lot and has yet to achieve its potential. And the Amtrak station
sees only scheduled nighttime trains. Here, a chartered train is
ready to take Cleveland Browns players and staff to practices
with the Buffalo Bills in Rochester, NY, August 2015 (KJP). 

Lots of pieces are coming into place that could greatly impact downtown Cleveland's lakefront in a very positive way. There are many challenges to be sure, but it seems that the planets are aligning for good things to happen.

These good things center on three basic ingredients -- trains/transit, shipping and development.

First ingredient -- Let's talk about lakefront development. There is a rumor going around that the Haslam Family (owner of the Cleveland Browns) want to build or rebuild a new multi-purpose stadium by the time the Browns' First Energy Stadium lease with the city expires in 2029.

There are several sites being considered for a new stadium, with the least problematic being the former Intermodal Yards site on the other side of Interstate 90 from Progressive Field. Norfolk Southern Corp. had its truck-to-train intermodal yard here until 2001 when it moved to a larger site in Maple Heights.

Today, the 48 acres next to downtown is owned by the Ohio Department of Transportation. While the site has been rumored for use as a professional soccer stadium, it could potentially be used for both soccer and football, as well as other functions especially if it is built with a dome or retractable roof.

At left is the lakefront with First Energy Stadium and, at right, is
the lakefront with the stadium replaced with a simple street grid
and development borrowed from parts of Cleveland's Arbor Park
on the East Side and Battery Park on the West Side (Google).

Word is that the Haslam Family wants to develop the lakefront site and use the revenues from it to help finance the construction of a new stadium or even reconstruction of the existing stadium. The stadium is a dead zone 355 days a year.

If the stadium is razed, it could be replaced with 38 acres of mid-rise housing, offices, restaurants and shops next to a publicly accessible waterfront promenade. If the stadium is reconstructed with a roof, the 18 acres of land north of it could still offer a significant development.

The timing is perfect as Congress and the Biden Administration are considering a $10 billion program to remove or at least de-emphasize some divisive urban highways and reconnect the fabric of urban centers and neighborhoods.

That could offer more funding to convert the Shoreway highway downtown into a boulevard, as has been long-planned by city officials. Another lakefront barrier, the railroad tracks, may be the subject of a land bridge to better unite the lakefront with downtown. A similar but larger project called the Rail Deck Park is planned in Toronto.

Second ingredient -- Speaking of trains, Amtrak is reaching out to state and local leaders to notify them of their desire to start five new routes in Ohio. Four of them would end in Cleveland, making the city a mini-hub for up to two dozen trains per day.

Crowds of passengers board one of 16 daily Amtrak trains at Down-
town Milwaukee's Intermodal Station which is also served by The
Hop streetcar, plus buses operated by Greyhound, Jefferson Lines,
Lamers Bus Lines, Indian Trails and Burlington Trailways. Maybe
Cleveland could someday have such a busy transit center (MIPRC).

Proposed routes include Cleveland to Toledo, Detroit and Chicago, Cleveland to Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and New York City, Cleveland to Buffalo, Rochester, Albany and New York City, and Cleveland to Columbus, Dayton and Cincinnati (3C Corridor).

At the outset, most trains would operate at 79 mph although they would travel at 110 mph in Michigan, New York and Pennsylvania thanks to their state-led infrastructure investments. A decade ago, Ohio gave back $400 million in federal funds to start the 3C Corridor because of false concerns that the trains would be too slow or that Ohio would have to subsidize the trains at a paltry $17 million per year.

The timing is perfect for two reasons. First, Amtrak, Congress and the Biden Administration may pass by spring a new rail development program that supports Amtrak rather than states to pay for new routes. That includes 100 percent of the construction costs and, for the first two years, 100 percent of the operating costs. Amtrak's share would diminish each year until the sixth year when the new route matures and becomes the state's responsibility.

Second, CSX Transportation, which owns the Columbus-Cleveland tracks, has rerouted freight traffic off the south half of the route, south of Galion. CSX may be willing to sell that part of the line, opening up an opportunity to upgrade it to 110 mph or even faster for passenger trains. The Commonwealth of Virginia is acquiring active and inactive CSX routes to develop 79-110 mph train services on multiple travel corridors around the state.

When there's no pandemic, Amtrak puts four trains a night and more than 600,000 riders each year through Cleveland. To put that passenger count into context, this equates to more than a dozen sold-out Boeing 737s coming to or through downtown Cleveland on average, every day -- er, night.

Twenty years ago, the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority
proposed the North Coast Transportation Center as part of an exten-
sion of the downtown malls, descending to a boulevard that would
have replaced the Shoreway. Also proposed was a lakefront hotel,
parking garage, shops and streetscaping (WSP).

That's just two middle-of-the-night routes. Now add four more routes -- with daylight services. If Ohio's General Assembly gives the Ohio Department of Transportation a green light to work with Amtrak, then I think we're going to need a bigger train station, Cleveland.

Twenty years ago, the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority (GCRTA) developed an attractive plan for a North Coast Transportation Center. Several years ago, the city restarted planning such a multimodal station with Greyhound and GCRTA included. Behind the scenes and with the Haslam Family, the city may still be planning the station as part of a land bridge over the tracks. If not, Amtrak's plans should spur them into action.

And who knows, maybe someday GCRTA will consider extending its Waterfront Line as a Downtown Loop so it actually goes somewhere other than a parking lot. Right now, only one-third of downtown's real estate is within a 5-minute walk of a GCRTA rail station. Depending on the route, a Downtown Loop could put anywhere from two-thirds to 90 percent of downtown's jobs and residents within a 5-minute walk of the Rapid.

Third ingredient -- Climate change is causing a world of losers but also a few winners. Cleveland could be one of the winners, but not for the reason (climate migration) that the New York Times wrote about a couple of times lately.

Instead, the opportunity comes not just from people moving up from the south, but from ships coming from the north. A recent article at The Maritime Executive wrote about the climate change opportunity for Great Lakes ports coming from the opening of shipping lanes from Asia through the Arctic Ocean.

Two "salties" were in the Port of Cleveland during a rain storm
June 23, 2020. The Aujaq of the Netherlands was departing for
Burns Harbor, IN while the BBC Leda of  Antigua Barbuda was
loading containers for Antwerp, Belgium. Cleveland's global
cargo link will likely become more prominent in the coming
decades as a short Arctic Sea route to Asia warms (YouTube).

A year-round Arctic route will cut shipping distances from Asian ports to Great Lakes and East Coast ports by thousands of miles. Consider that a Shanghai-Cleveland shipping route is more than 14,000 miles whether it is via the Suez or Panama canals. A Shanghai-Cleveland route via the Arctic could be as little as 9,200 miles, knocking a week off the transit time.

It is already physically possible to operate year-round through parts of the Arctic Ocean with ice-breaker escorts but those are costly to shippers. And low shipping rates make year-round container shipping via the Arctic impractical until costly ice-breakers are no longer needed. That could occur in only about 20 years, according to a BBC article.

That may also be true of Great Lakes shipping which is generally closed from December to March, also due to ice. Closure of shipping during winter plus the slower transit time via the St. Lawrence Seaway is a deterrent to Great Lakes container shipping. But that may soon change. 

New mega-ships that can't travel via the Panama Canal (but can via the Suez Canal) will soon be bound for a planned mega-ship container terminal at Sydney, Nova Scotia, where containers will be divvied up among smaller ships for delivery to ports on the East Coast and on the St. Lawrence Seaway-Great Lakes. That will reduce costs for consumer goods in the Great Lakes and East Coast regions.

The most recent expansion plan for the Port of Cleveland was
this one, dating from 2008. It proposed to relocate the port off
the downtown lakefront to a larger site built from lake/river
dredging deposits at the foot of East 55th Street (CCCPA).

The Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority is pioneering Great Lakes container shipping to/from Antwerp, Belgium. It is less time-consuming and costly to ship containers to Cleveland via an East Coast port like Newark, NJ, including a transfer to train or truck. Yet increased port congestion on the East Coast is making Cleveland increasingly attractive.

With a direct route to the Great Lakes and more ships crowding East Coast ports with the opening of an Arctic route, Cleveland is going to be an even more desirable destination for shipping companies. They are going to want to deliver loaded ships closer to the heart of America for distribution of containers by truck and rail to consumers.

Cleveland (metro population of 3.5 million) already has a leg up on Toronto and Chicago with its container port capabilities and experience. Eventually, Toronto (6.4 million people) and Chicago (9.7 million) are going to attract their share of container shipping.

But Cleveland could retain more than its share by further establishing itself as the mid-American gateway for containers due to its geographic location and port capabilities. Whether it can hold on to its leadership position will depend on whether it continues to improve its capabilities to handle more containers and increased transloading to truck and rail.

If it can, Cleveland may be in a great position geographically and economically in the coming decades.

END