PearlBrook’s ex-Peaches/Federal store to become RISE Dispensary

Built as the Federal Department Store and later became a Peaches record store,
the light-brick building with the tower along Pearl Road north of Brookpark
Road is about to become home to a RISE Dispensary for medical cannabis.
It is the latest change to the PearlBrook Shopping Center (Google).
CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.

Here comes another change to the PearlBrook Shopping Center at the northwest corner of Pearl and Brookpark roads in Cleveland’s Old Brooklyn neighborhood. Plans were submitted to the city last week for a new RISE Dispensary of medical cannabis to be located in a building at 5100 Pearl Rd. that was built for a Federal Department Store and later became a Peaches Records & Tapes store.

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Browns want 50/50 public/private cost-sharing for either stadium site

Are the days numbered for Cleveland Browns Stadium on Downtown Cleveland’s lake-
front? They are if the public comes up with a way to fund half of the cost of a proposed
$2.5 billion domed stadium in suburban Brook Park, as the Browns’ owners repor-
tedly have requested (Google). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.

When Cleveland Browns representatives last week showed state lawmakers designs for optional stadiums in Downtown Cleveland or in suburban Brook Park, they also shared something else — a proposed public-private cost sharing arrangement.

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Irishtown Bend work to barge in on river traffic

Before there can be an Irishtown Bend Park, there has to be a stable hillside above
the Irishtown Bend in the Cuyahoga River. Crews have been working since late-
summer 2023 to re-grade the hillside with a more gentle slope. Soon, a steel
bulkhead along the water’s edge will be installed from a barge partially
blocking the navigable waterway almost daily for more than a year
(Jordan Abbott). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.

In the coming weeks, the U.S. Coast Guard is expected to establish safety zone requirements for the barge-based installation of steel-wall bulkheads along the edge of the Cuyahoga River at Irishtown Bend in Cleveland. Those requirements will likely result in the daily closure of the river channel to commercial shipping for hours at a time but leisure and recreational boating is not expected to be significantly affected.

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Amtrak seeks $300m for Great Lakes-area stations

 Cleveland’s Amtrak station occasionally sees a daylight passenger train when
one of its nightly Chicago-East Coast trains is tardy enough. When that happens,
Clevelanders get to imagine what it might be like if had normal daytime train
service like its counterparts in neighboring states and a station more befit-
ting a major city (KJP). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.

Cleveland and other Northern Ohio cities would gain new, larger train stations from a program proposed by passenger railroad Amtrak to improve its intercity services here. The program, a five-year, $300 million Great Lakes Stations Improvement initiative, represents the first time in Amtrak’s 53-year history that it has pursued such an aggressive development effort for this region and specifically for the Cleveland-Chicago route.

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Downtown’s new AJ Rocco’s reopening in May

Built in 1880 as a saloon topped by apartments, this three-story building on Huron
Road just west of East 9th Street in Downtown Cleveland was added onto twice in
its history to become The American Savings Bank. One addition was in back and
the other was this terra cotta façade that was cleaned and restored to its former
beauty to match the attention to detail of the renovations made inside for AJ
Rocco’s new home and new full restaurant concept (KJP).
CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.

If you remember AJ Rocco’s as a coffee shop in the neighboring Caxton Building in Downtown Cleveland, the new AJ Rocco’s is going to be a big change for you. Restaurant-bar owner Brendan Walton and building owner Paul Shaia spared no expense in renovating a 19th-century bank building at 828 Huron Rd. to its Gilded Age glory with all of the rich woodwork, brick walls and metal decorative elements one would expect in a cozy downtown pub.

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Cleveland’s Central-Fairfax: the next hot zone?

This is where Cleveland’s Central and Fairfax neighborhoods meet, at Norfolk
Southern’s elevated railroad tracks near East 71st Street and Quincy Avenue.
The railroad was once a four-track line and had many industries clustered along
it. Now the area is largely devoid of employers and poverty is far above the
national average. City, county and private leaders are working to assembly and
clean properties to market them for redevelopment (Site Readiness Fund).

Cleveland’s Central and Fairfax neighborhoods haven’t been a hot zone for new real estate development since the Jazz Age of the 1920s and 30s. Back then, streets like Cedar, Central and Quincy were hopping with jazz clubs, speakeasies, flappers and gangsters. Aside the many night spots were factories that hummed with tens of thousands of jobs during the daytime hours. Most were tightly clustered along the four-tracked Pennsylvania Railroad that was elevated in 1915 to reduce traffic congestion.

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Downtown’s next crane may be MIA for a while

It may look like Sherwin-Williams’ new headquarters tower and a potential con-
cept for a phase two tower in Downtown Cleveland. But it’s actually the Texas
Tower in Downtown Houston. Perhaps Sherwin-Williams could build a similar
tower for its expected second phase to handle its growing office employment
(Comprehensive Zoning Services). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.

While the nation’s employment is high and incomes are rising, in many respects, the slowdown in new real estate construction projects is the worst the nation has seen since the credit crunch of 2008-10. Back then, everything stopped. Nothing new was getting built. Things aren’t too different now unless you’re building new data centers, warehouses or small housing projects.

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