Bedrock’s ambitious Tower City, riverfront plans

Bedrock Real Estate’s masterplan for the Cuyahoga Riverfront below Tower
City Center will reportedly take decades to realize (Adjaye Associates).
 CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM

After months of work, Bedrock Real Estate of Detroit and its masterplan architect David Adjaye Associates of Ghana today released their vision for the Cuyahoga Riverfront below Tower City Center in downtown Cleveland. The $3.5 billion vision would add more than 3.5 million square feet of mixed uses next to the former railroad passenger terminal turned shopping center. It’s the latest in a century’s worth of ambitious visions of the waterfront closest to Public Square.

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Police HQ to the ArtCraft Building

The City of Cleveland has announced that the new site for the new Division
of Police headquarters will be the historic Artcraft Building, 2540 Superior
Ave. It is located next to Interstate 90 at the east end of downtown in the
Campus District (Google). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM

After a competitive request-for-proposals (RFP) process the city has selected the historic ArtCraft Building, located at 2530 Superior Ave., as the top pick for the new Cleveland Division of Police (CDP) headquarters. The city will begin negotiations for the site with the property owner’s team led by TurnDev Development and expects to have legislation ready for City Council review in January 2023.

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Westinghouse plans revealed

A recent rendering of the planned Westinghouse redevelopment. While this
image is from a 2021 plan for the project, the proposed features in this angle
showing the West 58th Street frontage at left and the lake-facing side at right
haven’t substantially changed in the current planning (Trebilco/AECOM).
CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM

Plans for the Westinghouse redevelopment got a lot clearer this week after NEOtrans was able to secure recent conceptual plans for the project. While a luxury boutique hotel and apartments are likely to be the highest-profile features in a pending redevelopment of the former Westinghouse plant overlooking the West Shoreway, a less sexy land use will be the plan’s bread and butter. That use is a planned warehouse for Cleveland-based MCPC, an information technology company that helps businesses manage security risks and logistical challenges.

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Kalina House eyes construction in 2023

Over the next few weeks, the nonprofit Mark Kalina Jr. Foundation needs
the generosity of Greater Cleveland and beyond to realize dreams of building
the Kalina House along East 79th Street between Euclid and Carnegie avenues.
The site was selected due to its proximity to the HealthLine bus rapid transit
and its connectivity to Cleveland’s largest medical institutions (AoDK).
CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM

Although a proposed building in Cleveland’s Fairfax neighborhood to support individuals with traumatic injuries and their families is physically small, the need for the facility is large. To that end, the nonprofit Mark Kalina Jr. Foundation will host a Buy-A-Brick Fundraiser over the coming weeks in support of the proposed housing facility – The Kalina House. This opportunity for charity will run from Giving Tuesday on Nov. 29 until New Year’s Eve.

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The next CSU: a few insights

It may look like a new building but it’s not. As part of Cleveland State
University’s desire to add more dorms, the 1971-built Rhodes Tower may
be converted to housing and get a new exterior. This is just one example
of how it could look. Another is to add glass curtain walls to protect the
precast concrete façade from moisture and better insulate the building
(CSU). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM

When Cleveland State University (CSU) formally released its downtown campus master plan to the public last week, a few things were left out it. Their exclusion wasn’t because of some devious intent to deceive the public. Rather, it was because CSU officials and those at the Boston-based planning firm Sasaki Associates CSU hired to develop the master plan hadn’t yet made decisions on the omitted elements.

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Sherwin-William HQ+R&D rises to $750 million

To the left of a holiday-themed Terminal Tower, the new Sherwin-Williams
headquarters will rise to 39 stories, including rooftop mechanicals. At 616
feet, it will be the fourth-tallest tower in downtown Cleveland before the
end of 2024. This rendering shows how the new skyscraper will look on
some nights. On other nights it will have decorative lighting in its vertical
crevasses and within its reverse-angled crown (Michael Collier/SHW).
CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM

Sherwin-Williams (SHW) has announced that construction costs for its new headquarters in downtown Cleveland plus its research and development facility in suburban Brecksville have increased from at least $600 million to $750 million. But the cause, according to the global coatings giant, isn’t entirely what’s affecting all other construction projects — inflation and interest rates. Instead, it cited compliance with state, county and municipal regulations in hiring minority- and female-owned subcontractors and suppliers, plus local small businesses. Those regulations were triggered because of public-sector resources SHW tapped for these projects.

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Slavic Village’s Broadway in transit

The five-way intersection of Broadway Avenue, East 55th Street and Hamlet
Avenue is the traditional center of Slavic Village, once called Little Bohemia
for its large Czech population. It retains all of its pre-World War I buildings
even though many are in a decayed condition. Reviving this area as part of
the Broadway transit corridor is the goal of new planning and development
by the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority and Slavic Village
 Development Inc. (Google). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM

The beleaguered Broadway Avenue corridor in Cleveland’s Slavic Village could soon see new signs of life thanks to a federal grant that was awarded last week to the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority (GCRTA). The $432,000 grant will allow the transit agency to develop plans to redesign the Broadway corridor from the Turney-Ella bus loop near Calvary Cemetery to downtown as a bus rapid transit (BRT) route with enhanced pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure. Once those plans are complete, it can then apply for federal funds to build that infrastructure.

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