Medical Mutual HQ staff won’t return downtown

Medical Mutual’s 10-story, 120-year-old Rose Building in downtown Cleve-
land has been mostly empty since the pandemic, as many of the insurance
company’s employees are working from home. They will not return to
work in this building in 2023 and will instead report to work at the
company’s operations center in suburban Brooklyn on a hybrid
work basis (Google). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM

A spokesperson for health insurance industry giant Medical Mutual confirmed that the company’s headquarters will leave downtown Cleveland in 2023. However most of their roughly 1,000 downtown office employees never returned from remote-working during the pandemic, leaving the historic Rose Building at East 9th Street and Prospect Avenue mostly empty over the past two-plus years. Today’s news has led to some wondering if the building could be converted to residential as with other old office buildings downtown.

READ MORE

Historic buildings to be razed in Flats

This group of 19th-century buildings in the 1772-1800 block of the west
side of Columbus Road in Cleveland’s Flats are proposed to be demolished
by the property owner, a Beachwood developer which currently has no plans
for developing the site (Google). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM

A row of buildings along Columbus Road in the Flats is due to be razed in the coming weeks by an active, local real estate developer. But there is no plan to replace buildings, including two from the 19th century that stand in a nationally registered historic district. Instead, according to a partner at the property’s owner, Integrity Realty Group (IRG) of Beachwood, the contiguous buildings would be demolished to keep them from falling down on innocent passersby. No structural analysis was included in the owner’s demolition requests to the city.

READ MORE

Cleveland police HQ site search begins anew

Since 1977, the the Cleveland Police Department headquarters has been
located in this eight-story building at the northwest corner of Ontario
Street and St. Clair Avenue downtown. It has been proposed for several
new locations since 2017 and may be proposed for yet another pending
the outcome of a new request for proposals issued by Mayor Justin
Bibb’s administration this week (Ideastream).
CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM

Officials at Cuyahoga County and now at City Hall are having difficulty deciding where to build their new venues for addressing crime. Three years ago, an effort began in earnest to find a new home for Cuyahoga County’s new jail campus and a new courthouse tower. A steering committee set up to decide that course of action has failed to settle on a site for those facilities in that time. But the city’s efforts to find a new home for its Cleveland Police Department (CPD) Headquarters has been going on for even longer and will continue for at least a few months more, following an announcement today by Mayor Justin Bibb’s administration.

READ MORE

$80 million OK’d for Greater Cleveland development

Opening this past week was the new MAGNET incubator and job training
center on Chester Avenue in Cleveland’s MidTown neighborhood which
received $5 million in New Markets Tax Credits last year. Similar trans-
formative projects in this and other distressed neighborhoods will be
seeking tax credits from two allocations totaling $80 million to local
economic development organizations (GCP/Michael Collier).
CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM

Yesterday in Baltimore, Treasurer of the United States Chief Lynn Malerba awarded $5 billion worth of New Market Tax Credits (NMTC) nationwide, with $80 million of that to support real estate development projects Greater Cleveland. The projects are intended to be transformative by attracting private investment to create jobs in underserved communities.

READ MORE

MetroHealth adding more clinics at CMSD schools

Glenville High School, located just south of St. Clair Avenue at East 113th
Street, will be one of four Cleveland school buildings that will gain a new
community clinic as a result of MetroHealth System’s School Health
Program (Google). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM

A mix of federal and state funds along with a partnership of MetroHealth System and the Cleveland Metropolitan School District (CMSD) have come together to spur construction of additional health clinics at four Cleveland school sites to increase basic health care services to young people. A wide variety of health care services will be available at these clinics, including treatment of illnesses, mental health, sports injuries and even dental care.

READ MORE

Cleveland’s first railroad is history

A placard from the Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati Railroad showing
a proposed union station on Cleveland’s lakefront that would have included
a steamship terminal as well. While a union station that united several rail-
 roads under one roof was built, it didn’t look like this. The placard empha-
sizes Cleveland’s emergence from being a wilderness outpost to a well-
connected industrial center (WikiMedia Commons).
CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM

On an early fall day, Sept. 30, 1847, one of the most prominent men in the fast-growing state of Ohio rolled up his sleeves and joined others in starting the construction of Cleveland’s first-ever railroad. It was a ceremonial groundbreaking not unlike those of today where dignitaries flip dirt with golden shovels to commemorate the start of some new construction project. But, in this case, Cleveland’s first village president, its first attorney and the father of the Ohio & Erie Canal had to get his hands dirty pronto or his new railroad company would lose its charter from the state — again.

READ MORE

Affordable apartments planned at RTA station

This is a conceptual rendering of a proposed transit-oriented development
involving three sites at the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority’s
West Boulevard-Cudell Red Line rail station. The site that Flaherty &
Collins seeks to develop with affordable apartments is at far-right. While
it will likely look different than this, it may be of similar height and
scale (AECOM). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM

An Indianapolis-based real estate developer is seeking to build affordable apartments just west of the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority’s (GCRTA) West Boulevard-Cudell rapid transit station on land owned by the transit authority. Today, the GCRTA Board approved giving that developer, Flaherty & Collins LLC, an option to purchase the land for the development of 60 to 80 apartments. The option, priced at $5,000, gives the developer site control so it can nail down financing and city approvals over the next year. If the developer needs more time, RTA can extend the option for another year for another $5,000.

READ MORE