Down_with_Ctown

A lot is going to hinge on the fountain. Let’s hope they aim higher than, say, Landerhaven on this one.

It's beyond exciting to see residential developers out in front of what should be a decade of Cleveland Clinic main campus development on par with what they built in the mid-to-late aughts. And this time, it looks like the spillover will spread north into Hough and south onto Fairfax. There really couldn't be better news for University Circle or, indeed, the entire east side of Cleveland. As happy as I am to see the Circle Square high-rise going up across from Wade Lagoon and Severance Hall, it's smaller projects like these that can help with density and granularity throughout the neighborhood without many people noticing. A hundred or so people here and one hundred or so people there in dense neighborhood developments is how you actually reverse the now half-century long decline in Cleveland's urban core. More like this in Hough and Fairfax, please.

So is there anything NOT to love about this project? Over 1,000 people from many walks of life living under one roof in one of downtown's biggest and most historical buildings? This is easily one of the best and probably the biggest steps towards establishing a sustainable downtown population we've seen in a long time (and there has been much progress on that front in the last 10-15 years). And it also takes a ton of vacant office space off the downtown and CBD's billet. Just great news all around.

Something like this at 300' or so would be a perfect "step down" into the Warehouse District in terms of height as well. From the S-W massing KJP included in his article, it looks like the second S-W tower will rise a couple stories above the venerable Rockefeller, West 6th's tallest building south of St. Clair. That's adds some crucial symmetry and density to the skyline. Speaking of balance, the second S-W tower should also complement the smattering of 20-25 story buildings you see in the 9th/12th financial district on the other side of Public Square. Really looking forward to seeing our skyline from every angle once this mega-project is completed.

I've said it before, but greater Cleveland has been extremely fortunate when it comes to the fate of its retail brownfields--i.e., dead malls. Randall Park and Euclid Square Mall gave way to Amazon employment centers while Westgate and Parmatown became outdoor "lifestyle centers" (don't you dare call it a mall--there's no roof!) This project is a fresh attempt at filling up an old mall footprint and may just be the most interesting. Mostly because of the heavily residential aspect of the project. It will add 791 Class A luxury apartments to a city that had a population of just over 10k in the 2010 census. Depending on how many bedrooms each apartment unit has, that's close to a 10 percent increase in the city's residential population. Doesn't sound like much retail is going in (just 15k s.f.). The developer is talking up a "grocery store" but there's a 50-60k s.f. Dave's Supermarket across the street, so I'm not expecting a Giant Eagle or anything. It sounds like the 40k s.f. of restaurants will make up the vast majority of the non-residential portion of this project. It will be verrrrry interesting to see what restaurants DealPoint lands for the project because it will go a long way towards shaping public perception of the project. Will it be chains like Applebee's, Chili's, or Olive Garden? Or (hopefully) locally owned places? A Michael Symon or Zach Bruell entrant would go a long way towards attracting the kind of apartment dwellers these "Class A" apartments appear to be calling for. All in all, a great, forward looking project for Richmond Heights, an often overlooked community in the "Hillcrest" part of the east side burbs. With a brand new high school and Flexjet corporate headquarters just a mile or so north of this project, the city has been very fortunate the past 5-6 years or so.

Will be interesting to see if a lot of families and children wind up here. If so, it could be a major boost for enrollment at CMSD's Campus International school downtown.

So what's not to like about this project? Kinda bummed that Milwaukee is going to top us out soon with their own taller, mass timber framed building, but every major city is going to want one of these projects soon. Interesting that CLE and Milwaukee are taking the lead considering the upfront costs for timber are slightly higher than concrete and steel. But those costs are going to come down, especially because (as the article notes) the U.S. is just now breaking into the raw material side of the business. Our land and forest cover are so much vaster than Europe that we'll be able to muscle down the costs of wood framed buildings by supply alone. It's just a question of how quickly demand from builders will grow as well.

This question probably reveals my naivete about all things quantum computing, but does anyone know the actual, physical size of this Discovery Accelerator contraption? And do we know what specific building it will be housed in on CCF's campus? Maybe the latter never really gets publicized for security reasons, but I'm just interested from a real estate standpoint where this thing will be housed. Presumably, people will be coming from far and wide to observe this thing (although with cloud computing these days, maybe not) so I'm curious where the "action" (if any) will be in UC. Again, I may be wrong, but I'm picturing in my mind some kind of huge ENIAC-type thing that will dominate whatever floor and/or building it winds up in.

Hate to (potentially) be the bearer of bad news but as of the last week or so, all the fencing on this project fronting Richmond Road has been taken down. Not sure what, if anything, this means. I certainly haven't heard/read anything about a delay in construction.

IIRC, SW was drilling down to bedrock in the PS lot around a year or so ago. I guess we'll find out what their future plans are for the Jacobs lot depending on what foundation they put under the CoE. Fingers crossed.

Thanks! So at a projected size of 500,000 s.f., and a relatively small footprint at Carneige & 105th, might we see some serious height with this project? From your pic above it's within walking distance of the W.O. Walker tower so it would fit well on campus.

Couple of interesting things from the cle.com article: 1. The new Biorepository center was originally going to be built at the SW corner of Cedar and 105th (across the street from the IBM building and on the Opportunity Corridor). Thankfully, pushback from the community moved it further down Cedar, saving this prime intersection for Innovation Square. The cle.com article states that this would consist of "500 homes and a grocery store." Presumably, this is the same development that KJP has been writing about for months and would include the long sought "neighborhood" Meijer's 40k sf grocery store. 2. The Biorepository Center is around 25,000 s.f. So if the Global Pathogen Center in fact winds up at 500k s.f. as KJP mentioned above, then we're looking at a building (compound?) 20 times the size of the Bio center. Exciting! Question for you, KJP--I would imagine that the Global Pathogen Center winds up somewhere in/around the Cleveland Innovation District you wrote about last month. From what I understand, that District is planned for the area south of Cedar and west of 105th Street (correct me if I'm wrong). Have you heard anything about a specific location for the 500k sf building? That thing is going to be a whale and it if it does land in the area I mentioned (basically Fairfax), that would be a significant expansion of the Clinic's geographic footprint. Right now, the main campus primarily stretched from Chester down to Carneige with a few outposts on Cedar.

Here’s my two cents... First pic is Euclid Hts. Blvd. looking south. Second is Cedar Road looking north.

Yeah, I was going to ask the same thing, KJP. As I recall, you were hinting about some big CCF projects beyond even the Neurological building and Cole Eye expansion on Euclid right around this time last year before the pandemic hit. Nice to see CCF investing in its backyard after the decade-long pivot to Vegas, Florida, Dubai, and London. Plus a new CEO who seems to realize the importance of the surrounding neighborhoods.

Touting a jail in East Cleveland these days is, amongst other things, horrible timing from Budish. We just got a bird's eye view of his years-long effort to turn the County Jail into a profit center in last Sunday's PD. Complete with attempting to elbow out Metro's provision of inmate health care services to a politically connected firm. It's not hard to imagine that similar shenanigans are unfolding here. I'm not implying anything illegal, just short-sightedness, tone deaf political instincts, and horrific urban planning. Do we really want inmates being transferred up and down Euclid Avenue between downtown and East Cleveland five days a week? Right through Ohio's second largest employment center in UC and CCF and soon to be burgeoning residential neighborhood? Unbelievable.

Sorry if I'm missing something from the last few weeks, but wasn't the original plan to have two 20+ story towers? I.e., one for the main HQ and another for other office/administrative uses? Now, according to KJP's article and rendering, it looks like we're getting just one 30-35 story tower, plus the P.S. "lobby" and a parking deck. Not necessarily complaining--and I like the idea of farming out ancillary development to others--but I'm still a little disappointed. I get that the 30-35 tower at W.3rd and Superior would be around 1M s.f., but wasn't the original idea to have some of that spread out into another building?

Seeing this detailed map of not just Midtown but pretty much all of Hough makes me appreciate how close all this investment will be to League Park (which is located at 66th & Lexington). Naturally, anyone with an interest in visiting a place like the Dunham Tavern would also want to visit the restored League Park once they were "in the neighborhood." The Indians did a nice job restoring League Park's baseball diamond to functional use in 2013, but there's otherwise not much to "see" in terms of a tourist attraction. But with this activity now taking place just a few blocks south around 67th and Euclid, I think there's an opportunity to make the field more of a museum (the restored ticket office still stands). Combined with the brand new Allen Estates scheduled to break ground shortly, there's a lot of potential for the old ball field. I may be getting ahead of myself here, but there's some potential for a Wrigleyville/Field of Dreams vibe for League Park based on how intimately it's situated in the Hough neighborhood.

Now THIS is why cities are (or should be) so eager to land the headquarters of a Fortune 500 company smack dab in the middle of their central business district. Only that kind of project is big enough by itself to create spinoff demand for a 5-star hotel and/or brand new residential/office high rise towers that otherwise would never exist. Not saying this project a sure thing, of course, but at least it's a possible thing for CLE's future. That's more than we could say at anytime in the last 30 or so years. Must...not...speculate...about...what downtown...would look like with the HQ's of...Progressive...Eaton...American Greetings...all concentrated in just a few square miles...

If the Meijier's winds up being around 40,000 s.f. like KJP's article stated, I doubt you'll be be alone. The Dave's at Cedar Fairmount is pretty small for a full-service grocery store (not that it's a bad place to shop), which is probably why Giant Eagle abandoned it a decade or so ago. If I had to guess, I'd say that Dave's location is smaller than 40k. So the selection at the Fairfax Meijer's may well be better. Bottom line, I think the Meijer's will draw from all over--Heights commuters, Clinic employees, Fairfax residents, and University Circle residents (the last of which is going to be a fast-growing demographic if/when Circle Square takes off). It should be a win-win for everyone.

Great news! That Meijer store is going to catch the attention of everyone in the region. I love that it's going to be in Cleveland proper. And a 40,000 s.f. grocery store is no joke. It will be nearly twice as big as the 21K s.f. Biorepository building that KJP mentioned in the article (that's the building going up right now on Cedar just a little bit west of 105th). And IIRC, a full-service Heinen's or Giant Eagle is around 50-60 s.f., so this "Neighborhood" Meijer's will be about 2/3 the size of the grocery stores we know and love (c.f., the smaller Constantino's that used to be in Uptown).

Here’s a skyline photo looking west from about 120’ in the air from a building around East 105th and Cedar. I tried to get the Lumen dead center in the middle of the pic. It’s the dark-ish building and really fits in from a height perspective.

Maybe fast-growing, suburban titan Union Home Mortgage will take the hint and follow suit? According to a google search, their main offices are in Mentor, Solon, and Strongsville, lol. Union Home was recently ranked No. 1 or 2 in Cle.com's top* employers, so why not enhance that ranking by grabbing a spot in the heart of downtown? *--this was based on quality of employer practices, not workforce size.

Some steel in the air! (Euclid Heights Blvd., looking south).

Midwestern steelworkers are, shall we say, a coveted demographic in this year's Presidential election scrum, so I foresee plenty of pandering in their direction from both podiums this evening. If even half of the promises (I know, I know) from the victor in November come true, then Cliffs will be occupying a pretty sweet political and strategic spot in national life for the next four years. Considering how much uncertainty there is economy-wide, that's great news for Cliffs and good news for Cleveland.

Not the best shot in the world, sorry, but I was in a hurry. Anyway, this is a look at the top of the hill portion of the project. The elevator shafts have sprouted! Meanwhile, on the Euclid Heights Blvd. side, the ground floor of a parking garage is emerging. About as exciting as it sounds, and I didn’t have time for a pic. :-).