Down_with_Ctown

Just from an anecdotal standpoint, the north/south side streets full of single family homes between the Cleveland Clinic main campus and the Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court (basically, the city block between Cedar and Quincy Avenues, and East 93rd Street to East 105th) have been seeing significant refurbishments in the last few years. New roofs, windows, and sidings on existing homes abound and many previously empty lots are seeing new homes being built. This neighborhood is turning a corner, if it hasn't already.

Yet more skyline (love using that word in the context of UC) of the Artisan tower going up, this time looking north from Quincy. Stacks nicely with the W.O. Walker building and 1UC, I think.

I don't think there's anything fallacious about your thinking, but if I was to look on the bright side, I'd say it's a good thing to have one's favorite sports team owned by someone (or some company) with a diversified asset base. The era of "family owned" sports teams like the Dolans/Guardians (or the Mike Brown/Cincinnati Bengals) scenario where said family is heavily dependent on the team's cash flow from a personal wealth/income standpoint is coming to a rapid close. Granted, a small market baseball team is always going to fade into the background of an ownership portfolio containing, say, NFL and/or EPL franchises, but at least you'd avoid the low lows that us 'Dians fans experienced in 2017-21, where the team payroll fell off a cliff from about $130M/season to about $50M. It used to be that "out of town" owners produced an ominous gulp amongst fans in smaller markets like CLE/PIT/CIN. But I'm not sure that's the case anymore. For all the faults of folks like Dan Gilbert and Jimmy Haslam, they have not skimped on building up the value of the Cavs and Browns, respectively. Meanwhile, it was "hometown" owner Art Modell of Waite Hill that moved the crown jewel of the Cleveland sports scene to Baltimore because he had all his eggs in the Browns/Municipal Stadium basket and was basically bankrupted by 1995.

No, but there had been some (very temporary) fencing that went up on the west side of East 105th Street all the way from Cedar Road to Quebec Road in late 2021 that was recently taken down.

A veritable “forest” of concrete support pillars has sprouted up at 105th and Cedar. Plus, a crane of sorts is on site helping to erect a 5-story elevator shaft. This project has been moving quickly in April!

I certainly get what you're saying, but hopefully this becomes much less of an issue in the long run. No one knows when the EV revolution will fully come upon us, but if (when?) it does, transporting defendants from jail to Court and back should be pretty low hanging fruit for electric vehicles and/or smart cars. In fact, this is the kind of task that EV's/AV's are made for--short distances (no range anxiety) at set times of day (9-5 M-F) across a large fleet that will have plenty of time to recharge during off-hours. I'm not saying I expect the county Sheriff's office to go "all electric" by, say, 2025 or so. That will be pretty expensive, but I think it will happen eventually. And the county will have purchasing power as a sizeable public entity. And maybe there will be federal/state subsidies to encourage transition. The jail will hopefully have a useful life of 40-50 years or so, so there will be plenty of time to figure out green transportation options as we go forward. Now, I'm far from an expert when it comes to this subject, so I could well be missing something. Maybe the security issues transporting dozens or even hundreds of jailees across town make EV's forever impractical. I'd be happy to stand corrected if there's a huge hole in my logic above.

Agreed. The Flats have as much potential as just about any other natural area in the midwestern United States due simply to the unique winding nature of the Cuyahoga. Back in the 80's, the "Flats" were the east and west banks, period, and barely extended south of the Detroit-Superior Bridge. Now, with the (hopefully) coming trifecta of Bedrock, the Irishtown Bend park, and Scranton Peninsula, the geography is about to boom. I think the key will be connectivity between old and new. Still plenty of room to grow with trails, the Waterfront line, kayaking, and Terminal Tower. Exciting times.

Re: the Ford Road garage across from Hessler, it sounds like UCI was sniffing around about the possibility of building some (residential) height on top of the existing structure? And the determined that there was no way the current garage could sustain such a project, so the solution is to build new parking? And said new parking will hopefully include apartments on top? If so, exciting news, as this will only add to an already vital intersection. More living space in Uptown is great. On that topic, I'm surprised nothing has happened with the old CDC site on Euclid Ave between East 117th and 118th Streets. I checked the county's GIS website, and UCI owns the parcel(s). It would seem that this would be a prime opportunity for some more residential growth, hopefully with a seriously vertical component to it.

Two photos (west to east) of the project facing Cedar Road. It looks like there will be a good amount of ground floor retail in this part of the project. With Nighttown directly to the east and the rest of Cedar Fairmount spreading east from there, it will be fascinating to see what kind of tenant mix winds up in this project!

I love the row houses, too, but I'll gladly swap them for some serious density in CLE's second downtown. This kind of foresight may save us from another 10-stroy parking garage on CCF's main campus a decade from now.

Windows pretty much installed throughout the first residential floor!

Not gonna accuse KJP of burying the lede, because the persistence and survival of this mega-project even without the TMUD credit IS the big story here, but that tidbit in the second to last paragraph about Church & State's 90 percent occupancy just a year into leasing is...awesome. That should be more than enough momentum to make this project a success, even with Intro soon to open its doors down 25th Street. Also, great to see the mixed use piece of the project survive. As others have said upthread, a hotel will be a great addition to Ohio City and only add to the neighborhood's around the clock vitality.

The exteriors of the low-rise apartment buildings that make up the Euclid Heights Blvd. portion of the Top of the Hill development are pretty much done, and look pretty nice. These pics are from over the weekend, looking on the north-ish sise of Euclid Hts. The light beige brickwork, by the way, will also be part of the facade on the high-rise tower that faces out on Cedar Hill. Pretty handsome design all around, I’d say.

With over 1,000 people from all walks of life under one roof, this is truly a city within a city and probably the biggest step towards a sustainable downtown population this century (and that's actually saying a lot, considering where we started). And don't forget that there's a Heinen's right across the street and the Health Line going down Euclid Ave. If a resident in this building worked, say, downtown or in University Circle, they could literally live without a car in DT Cleveland (there's always Uber and Lyft to cover the odd errand or two). Eating out would be expensive right now, but maybe this development will prompt the Chipotles or Applebee's (don't laugh, it's part of the ecosystem) of the world to set up shop in the CBD. Truly exciting news. Yet another promising aspect of this project is all the zombie office space it takes off the market. Between this building and the AT&T building further north on 9th Street, that's a lot of empty commercial square footage coming off the market. There won't be many empty buildings in downtown Cleveland by the end of this year, which is pretty incredible considering the COVID- induced headwinds of the last 24 months.

SW corner of Cedar & East 105th, as seen from the top of the CCF parking garage catty-corner to the intersection.

Demolition in progress of a building north of Euclid Avenue and west of 65th Street.

Construction photos of the SE corner of Cedar & E. 105th (a.k.a., Innovation Square, a.k.a., the development with the neighborhood Meijer’s).

I didn't have a chance to stop and snap any pics due to the snowstorm yesterday, but there's significant work already underway at the SE corner of East 105th Street and Cedar, future site, of the Meijer-anchored apartment development. Heavy earth-moving equipment has already started excavation work on the site from Cedar all the way south to Wain Ct. Also, multiple vehicles parked in the lot at the intersection, so there's already a decent amount of manpower on the site daily. Not bad, considering we're less than a month removed from groundbreaking. It's going to be fun to watch this site develop!

Some early spillover from the $1B+ investment on the new Metro campus, perhaps? As the crow flies, this building is less than a mile south of the new Metro tower, but I-71 and Riverside Cemetery function as a kind of "psychological" barrier when you're actually on the ground. Nonetheless, this is still a nice location. The Zoo is just SW of this building and there's room for the "Metro neighborhood" to grow southwards. (I think the new Metro campus will also grow northwards and meet up somewhere with Ohio City and La Villa Hispania). If Metro can encourage its workers to live nearby (something the Clinic is working on in University Circle), then this project could really take off.

Agreed, the development has been haphazard, if not bass-ackwards. DPM originally got involved several years ago when it converted the Macy's building to a self-storage site. Pretty unambitious, but apparently they liked what they saw on the ground because they bought the rest of the property and (slowly, but surely) developed a pretty nice mix of residential and retail that is (unfortunately) still pretty unique for inner-ring burbs in NEO. The Meijer's is a huge coup for Hillcrest, as it will be the sole full-size Meijer's on the east side of Cuyahoga County. It's too bad DPM already sunk in about $10M into the Macy's/self-storage site because it's a huge dead spot in an otherwise exciting mixed-use environment. I'd rather that building get knocked down than the 20-screen theater, but what can you do?

Rearview of the Top of the Hill tower looking west, and taken from the elevated outdoor parking deck behind the Starbucks/Appletree Books/Howard Hanna retail/residential strip on the north side of Cedar Road today (11/10/21). Really fits in well, IMO.

pics here (sorry for the double post!)

Just this morning I saw City of Cleveland workers stringing up temporary plastic fencing on the west side of 105th Street all the way from Cedar to Quebec Ave. Perhaps that groundbreaking for Square 105 and/or Innovation Square may not be that far off??

Exciting news, particularly with the sheer # of jobs added and the decision to make the Neurological Institute an inpatient facility, thus necessitating the addition of nearly 1M s.f. to the CCF main campus (if I read KJP's article correctly, originally the Neuro Institute was going to be outpatient only). It appears that the center of gravity on the Clinic's main campus is drifting south and southeast now that the Neurological Institute is moving from Euclid Ave. to Carneige. With the Pathogens Center likely to land on Cedar or Carneige and the Innovation District popping up at the Opportunity Corridor's front door, the Clinic is decidedly tilting towards Fairfax (although the medical school gives them a firm anchor on the edge of Hough as well). The Cole Eye Institute expansion will provide some nice infill on Euclid and it will be interesting to see what the Clinic does with the spot on Euclid that was originally going to house the Neuro Institute. As others have said, this can only turbocharge the residential development going up in UC. Circle Square and Innovation Square were announced before the Neurological Institute more than doubled in size. Who knows what will/can be next. UC's residential options have been growing organically for over a decade now, and that was during the CCF's main campus development pause following the opening of Miller and Glickman in the mid to late aughts. Now that cranes are once again going up in Cleveland as opposed to Vegas/London/Abu Dhabi, it will be fascinating to see what this neighborhood looks like ten years from now.

Several months ago, I recall reading that the West 3rd Street parking garage will be designed so as to accommodate future development on top of the existing four stories (a la the Beacon). Now, I know S-W is also reserving the NE corner of West 6th and Superior for a future 20-story or so office tower (across the street from the existing Rockefeller building). That's a lot of space, so I'm guessing the parking garage won't be developed anytime soon. But it would be nice to learn that the option for extended height on that big a base so close to Public Square is out there.