Potamus

I love the site plan but don't really like either of the building designs. Library lofts is just bland - took a regular brick (or brick-looking) box and put a few concrete dividers on it. As another poster mentioned, the tower looks kind of thrown together. I like that they tried to cover up the garage, but the panels don't look good and the tower (while tall) is kind of meh and doesn't seem to relate too the base. Altogether it looks like a generic placeholder for an apartment tower rather than a real design. Compared to 1UC, it's really underwhelming design-wise.

Warner Swasey would be huge. It's been such a problem child for so long...

Apparently it expands clinic areas and other items too. See story here: https://www.wkyc.com/amp/article/life/animals/cleveland-apl-expands-capital-campaign/95-acd029fb-12f2-4f3b-aa56-89c12858b4ec

At this point, given how common these kind of incentives are, wouldn't they be foolish not to?

Eminent domain wasn't really intended for that sort of open-ended thing. Ie "we wish you'd do something better with this and than you're doing". It's really designed for situations like where the government wants to build a road to prevent an individual whose property the government would need to buy from just holding up the whole thing because they didn't want to sell. As KJP notes, in general the government can't just force you to sell your land to them (or really to do much of anything in particular with it). In court, the burden of proof is on the government in these cases and they face an uphill battle. Point is, we should probably not spend a lot of time on this topic as it's not a very realistic path in this case.

Yeah I never thought of the Flats East Bank as having a "skyline" at all ...

Yeah, for comparison, Progressive has about 10,000 employees in Cleveland so this would be a much smaller player but, still, 300-400 hq-type employees coming to the region would be a nice add.

The article said the warrensville site was 80 acres - wonder if SHW ever considered putting the R&D site there or, if not, why not?

I know the massing shown is preliminary and may not look anything like the final project, but... You can kind of estimate the height of the main tower by comparing it to 55 PS next door. That building is 22 stories and about 300' tall. From the massing above the main tower looks to be much taller. Maybe 35-40 stories and 450-500'?

And if it's as bad a deal as some on here seem to think, it'll fail or they'll need to lower prices. Market forces tend to work these things out.

^I'm confused. This is planned for South of Euclid on the edge of Little Italy, replacing two parking lots by the look of it. Perhaps you're thinking of a different spot? As it sits in pretty happy to see two parking lots go.

Does the measurement for site 1 include the garage or is it just for the building?

I think tastybunns is referring to a reference you made to something "bigger than Progressive" coming to downtown or something similar. Was that the Centennial?

Just speculating, but I'm guessing the author meant that the plant had been idle since 2000. Seems like they had a lot on environmental issues to clean up before they could actually put it on the market. Probably would have been more accurate to say "that Ford hasn't been using for a long time."

Ugh. This went from kind of interesting to seeming like a money grab. Unless they can get some bigger firms here or things like JumpStart or BioEnterprise I can't see this working.