gg707

I have a lingering concern that they aren't going to reopen, although I'm not basing that on any actual information.

I don't love the new townhomes (the next phase seems better design wise), but I don't mind downtown having townhome-height density mixed throughout. Philadelphia and DC are two of the densest cities in the US, and they both have lots of 3-4 story single family homes mixed into the downtown/business district areas and nearby. They are both dense because they don't have huge stretches of open surface lots or vacant land, and instead almost all of the land is built on. If I had the option to have all of the vacant lots in and around downtown Cleveland filled with inhabited townhomes, with the exception of a few lots where that would be bizarre looking (for example, Public Square, on Euclid, on E.9th), I'd take it in a heartbeat.

That's exciting. This is one of those development ideas/areas that I didn't think was ever really going to take off, but with a big tenant, that makes it way more realistic.

Citizen Pie is my favorite pizza in Cleveland, so I'm also very excited. I'm also happy to see businesses continuing to push forward with downtown plans despite COVID.

The activity that makes downtown really vibrant -- lots of busy offices, sporting events, playhouse square, busy bars -- is different than the things driving development in some of the inner neighborhoods, so I can see how Hingetown is doing great, but downtown buildings are hurting right now. Much of the activity in Ohio City is based on services supporting residents, which can stay above water a little better. If I was renting a unit, I'd certainly rather be in Hingetown than in downtown right now. I love downtown, but it feels very dead because of COVID.

That's a good perspective. Hopefully future financings of buildings use the 2 year horizon and not the 1 year. I worry about more fragile urban housing markets, such as Cleveland, in this downturn.

That's a very bad sign for any future apartment construction downtown.

Duck Rabbit is moving near there and is supposed to be opening in a few weeks. Maybe that is it?

That's great. I really love that they are doing these houses and am glad that it sounds like more are on the way. They aren't anything exciting like a big mixed-used building, but they are the kind of slow investment in the area through home ownership that is needed to redevelop areas like Slavic Village.

I hope this goes forward, but am starting to get a bad sense around this one.

I would hope that the city doesn't allow a bunch of NIMBYs to block productive use of the nearby land to preserve a few views.

I agree it is pedestrian friendly overall, but that location is only really accessible by walking from one direction and there are other parking lots that need to be crossed before getting to it. But I agree, something that has more street frontage would be better.

That is pretty underwhelming. Although near Pearl/Broadview, it is not the most pedestrian friendly location, so I think anything going there is going to end up with a fair bit of parking. That said, it would be nice if they could make the buildings wider so that they covered more street frontage.

Is this on the same land where the cold storage facility was proposed a year or two ago?

Glad to see this going ahead finally! And frustrating that the city allowed competing apartment owners to block a project for so long.

Hopefully just a temporary setback, but that's a disappointing development.

That's a really interesting take and you may be right. A lot of these smaller communities could be in a bad place financially soon.

You are right that they largely should. I worry about some of the smaller one having bad policies or no policy though. I'm also concerned about cash flow for these businesses. In normal times, they might be able to float for a bit until insurance payments come in, but post-COVID, they are already all in a cash tight position.

This is tall enough (maybe) that it will carry the skyline eastwards a little further from certain viewpoints. From the west side, Fenn Tower looks like a random blip going east, but this will start to create a cluster of buildings around there, tying it back to the Rhodes tower and the Lumen.

Some preliminary renderings and plans for the Stoneleigh project at Lorain and W. 20th. I wasn't able to get all of the floor plans, but it is similar to the Quarter in that a lot of the first floor is actually wrapped parking, with some additional underground parking accessible from W. 20th. There is no retail, unfortunately, and the Lorain frontage is a mixture of lobby space, which looked attractive, and parking. The units are a mix of one bedroom and studios, with a good number of balconies. The stated timeline was groundbreaking within 2020 and completion in 2022.

It doesn’t blow me away, but I also think the lighter colored glass will look good around the more industrial brick in the area. The blue will look good looking east from OC against the other buildings. The other buildings down there are kind of stumpy, so a thinner tall building will add some variety.

We'd be seeing the city-wide growth even sooner, or it could be happening already, if there wasn't such an enormous level of disparity between opportunities for people in different parts of the metro area. As a city we are paying the price of decades of segregation and racism. A lot of the growth in the near-west, UC, downtown, etc. is people who benefited and are now moving back into the city (children of suburban families, downsizers, or people moving back to the city in their 30s from other metros). This sort of trend is going to help broaden the tax base in the city, improve the schools, improve infrastructure, and encourage investment city-wide, and I think we are starting to see more of the broader growth spread into those areas and for benefits of investment to be felt city-wide, but it takes time to fix decades of purposeful neglect.

I would assume that they are going to have insulation and interior walls. I've never been in one, but I've seen photos of interesting shipping container buildings built in other places.

Quite an impressive job destroying an urban area.

I can't find it, but I remember someone suggesting on here a flagship Sherwin Williams retail store on the ground floor, which would be totally awesome. A Sherwin Williams museum, combined with a paint science exhibit (in conjunction with Great Lakes Science Center) would also be a fun public facing way to make the street level lively.