Lowest unemployment rate in 23 years

Greater Cleveland’s largest and fastest-growing job sector is education and
health services, or “eds and meds.” One of the biggest employment drivers
 is the Cleveland Clinic Foundation. Here, at its new Ted Ross Lab at Lerner
Research Institute, Clinic workers help develop vaccines in a tissue culture
room. Ross is Global Director of Vaccine Development at Cleveland
Clinic (CCF). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.

For many Greater Clevelanders, they had a merry Christmas year thanks to one of the tightest job markets locally in more than two decades. According to preliminary data released late last week by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the unemployment rate for the Cleveland-Elyria-Mentor metropolitan area was the lowest it has been since December 2000.

READ MORE

Happy holidays to you!

  Photo by KJP (CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE).

Merry Christmas and happy holidays to you and yours from NEOtrans!

Great Lakes Brewing move to Avon on tap?

Great Lakes Brewing Company may abandon its plans to build a production
facility and tasting room on this vacant land on Scranton Peninsula in Cleve-
land’s Flats and instead build a consolidated facility in Avon next to Interstate
90 that also relocates its Strongsville canning plant. Company officials are
reportedly ‘strongly considering’ the Avon site. Just beyond the vacant land,
NRP Group’s The Peninsula apartments were rising in this October 2023
view (KJP). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.

ARTICLE UPDATED DEC. 24, 2023

A Cleveland icon may not be in Cleveland much longer. Executives and owners of Great Lakes Brewing Company (GLBC) are debating a significant relocation of most of its operations out to west-suburban Avon in Lorain County. The 200-employee company has been headquartered and its beer products brewed in Cleveland’s Ohio City neighborhood since its founding 35 years ago. But Avon’s mayor said an announcement may be made about the potential new site “in the coming months.”

READ MORE

Record Rendezvous building among historic renovation awards

The middle building is 300 Prospect Ave., the former Record Rendezvous
building that won an historic tax credit award today from the state to aid
in its rehabilitation. The former record store and its founder Leo Mintz
are prominent in the history of rock-and-roll music. However, it’s not
yet known if a recreated Record Rendezvous store will be part of its
post-rehab future (KJP). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM

An historic building in Downtown Cleveland that housed Record Rendezvous, where the term “rock and roll” was reportedly first used to describe the genre, was awarded tax credits to aid in its restoration. It was among dozens of historic buildings across the state that were awarded credits today by the Ohio Department of Development.

READ MORE

East 105th: What difference a decade makes

There’s only two things that are the same in these two photos from
August 2014, top, and December 2023 at bottom. One is the street
address — 2200 E. 105th St. The other is the brownish 16-story
Walker Center which was the tallest building in the University Circle
area in 2014. Today it’s the third-tallest and nearly blocked out of
view by the Cleveland Clinic’s 3,000-car, 915,000-square-foot East
105th Parking Garage. At left is the new Medley Apartments over
Meijer grocery store. Across the street is the former IBM Explorys
building that may be the new home for Canon Healthcare research
 (Google/KJP). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.

For many Greater Clevelanders and visitors, they now enter the Cleveland Clinic’s Main Campus and the University Circle area on the new Opportunity Corridor Boulevard. But few traveled this way before the boulevard was completed in late-2021 and may not have a full appreciation of how much the scenery along their commute or visits have changed in less than a decade.

READ MORE

Brooklyn Masonic Hall gets new lease on life

Residential and commercial leasing is underway for the new Lofts On Pearl
which is the old Brooklyn Masonic Temple in Cleveland’s Brooklyn Centre
neighborhood. Lakewood-based developer Kostas Almiroudis is moving
his offices onto the ground floor at left to focus on further redevelopment
of the area (KJP). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.

A Masonic rehabilitation has a different meaning in Cleveland’s Brooklyn Centre neighborhood these days. At 3804 Pearl Rd., it means the renovation and repurposing of a 25,536-square-foot Brooklyn Masonic Temple into 26 market-rate apartments over two ground-floor commercial spaces bracketing the building’s terrazzo-, marble- and wood-laden lobby.

READ MORE

Three big county projects about to advance

This is an unofficial conceptual massing (a rendering to show scale, not
design) of what a new Consolidated Courthouse could look like if built
near the lakefront at The Pit between West 3rd Street, at left, and West
9th Street, at right. In between, atop five levels of structured parking
and a layer of public atriums of shops and restaurants could be two
courthouse structures of nearly 450,000 square feet each. Such a com-
plex would not only meet Cuyahoga County’s requirements but also
provide stadium parking relocated from a to-be-developed lakefront
(Ian McDaniel). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.

Fifteen years ago, when the Great Recession could let someone go bowling down East 9th Street without hitting anyone, three major construction projects were about to get started and provide the city of Cleveland with much-needed economic stimulus. Back then, construction of the new Huntington Convention Center, the Flats East Bank redevelopment, and the new Inner Belt highway bridges represented a total public works investment of nearly $1.5 billion.

READ MORE