LlamaLawyer

Anybody familiar with this guy, Ross DiBello, who is campaigning for Cleveland mayor on a platform that includes closing Burke Lakefront Airport? https://rossdibello.com/

The front page of Crain's right now mentions: Three Cleveland companies making out of state acquisitions Two Cleveland companies raising significant capital investment One Cleveland company moving downtown One Cleveland company eyeing an acquisition Cavs owner Dan Gilbert is apparently now the 15th richest person in the U.S. It's nice to feel optimistic some days.

This is the kind of low-cost, high-impact fixture that is really important in my opinion. I'm so grateful for the art installations that have been popping up over the last several years which really add character. If Portland's motto is "Keep Portland weird," maybe we can try "MAKE Cleveland weird."

Wow, I'm surprised by the scale of this. Just imagine if this comes to pass, along with the Viaduct (feeling like that name may be too generic now, lol) plus Nautica getting developed, along with Church & State & Quarter...The density is staggering.

Do we know the second phase will also be rent controlled? I was under the impression they might have some market rate/luxury units in upcoming phases, which would probably help their dollars and cents add up and could also be beneficial for mitigating stigma. The fact the higher floors are waiting for phase 2 makes me wonder this as well since I'd think you'd want higher levels to be market rate if you are choosing.

Hopefully they don't need the tax credit and can just charge ahead. I take it with a grain of salt every time someone says they need the mystical TMUD credit because you aren't eligible for the credit unless you need it to complete the project.* So every time I hear a developer talk about how badly they need the credit, I wonder: do you really need it or did your lawyers just tell you that you have to keep saying you need the credit until you're 100% sure your financing stack adds up without it. *I know it's not law yet; I'm talking about how it will be.

<start pipe dream> Maybe they can build on either side of the historic buildings with a skybridge hotel between the two fitting over. </end pipe dream> Whatever happens, I’m just glad we’re having discussions about the relative merits of new development vs historic preservation instead of new surface lots vs historic preservation.

Anyone know the status of the art/playground installations proposed for Mall C? Hopefully something is still happening with it. Right now the closest park to downtown that really feels like a park is Lincoln Park in Tremont. With the Irishtown bend park, we'll have something closer, but that's not exactly a walk in the park if you live on East 9th (pun intended). The malls are great for events, but they're not exactly inviting places to hang out.

You need a few new ugly buildings in Little Italy so the old ugly buildings don't feel left out. Feng Shui is all.

This isn't a criticism particular to News 5, but the editing quality of online local news sources (actually even a lot of national sources) tends to be appalling these days. That's probably just part of what happens when the 24-hour news cycle becomes the 24-minute news cycle.

@cle_guy90 A couple points on that-- First, I don't think we know what the development was bringing in rentwise versus what debt service was. It's possible they had over a year of nice profits and so the loss they're taking could be a lot less. Second, there could be other side payments the lender is making to Fairmount for the property. It is an affiliate of the actual lender making the purchase after all. Maybe they're trying to lower the sale's transparency for tax purposes...

Nothing I can see from public records indicates Fairmount was really in default. Even if they were technically in default, the property could still be doing just fine. I can see a developer defaulting on purpose and handing over the keys to the lender group if they think the likely sale price is close to the current mortgage amount and are just wanting to dump the property and move on. Or maybe the lender group was just interested in owning the property. I don't know much about the organization. Selling a commercial property to the lender is obviously not the most common exit strategy for a developer, but it doesn't inherently mean the property was underwater on a monthly revenue basis. Obviously there could be other reasons to be worried about Pinecrest or Fairmont, but "deed in lieu of foreclosure" doesn't really mean anything for sure.

The food desert points are all well taken. Also though, Meijer is a total newcomer to the market, and a very attractive newcomer for a wide variety of shoppers. It's not like this is just another Giant Eagle. I live in Cleveland Heights two or three miles from the location and could see myself shopping at that Meijer on a weekly basis depending on how their selection looks. For anyone who lives in the Heights and works downtown, this is also on the way back from work. So I would expect this Meijer to do very well and draw significant east side suburb business.

Thanks for the explanation of the labor force vs. jobs number. This explanation makes way more sense than mine.

I didn't want to come out and say it, but I feel validated by the follow up comments so I will. My first concern was that maybe these numbers are being tinkered with somehow to lower the unemployment rate. The easiest way to make the unemployment rate look lower is to redefine a bunch of unemployed people who aren't looking for work very hard. Lots of people have been looking for work for months and are probably getting fatigued in their search but would jump at a job opportunity if they found one. Your unemployment rate looks a lot better if you decide those people aren't really unemployed. Also, to be clear the 53,000 more is jobs not people employed. So it's not impossible (and has happened before) that the total nonfarm can be higher than the total labor force since everyone who is employed has at least one job and some people who are employed have more than one job. This margin is very high and strange though. The last time total nonfarm was higher than the total labor force unemployment was like 3%.

I think we know even less about what the shorter building on the Superblock will look like, but wow does it make a big difference from that view down Euclid. It's almost more impactful than the actual tower from that angle. If we get a 620' tower (instead of a 800' tower) that results in more development on the Superblock now is that really a loss?

BLS data for the metro is out. Labor force is way down, now the lowest level on record. Employment is also down, but still better than April. On the other hand total nonfarm had a pretty nice gain. Most sectors gained jobs, and the ones that lost jobs had relatively small losses. So I'm at a bit of a loss as to what is going on. We now have 50,000 more jobs than people in the labor force and almost 150,000 more jobs than employed people. More people have stopped looking for work and of those who have work more of them have taken a second job? https://www.bls.gov/regions/midwest/oh_cleveland_msa.htm

Yes please!

Weirdly enough, I think now would actually have been a good time to build a theater. So many are closing, but one would think theater demand should be back up to pre-pandemic levels in a couple years so the surviving ones should be a bit better off. But anyway, it's amazing this is going forward. Love the micro apartments too. Let's pack 'em in there until we have the second biggest downtown population in the midwest.

And one of the few Cleveland companies that got bought out was bought out by a British company with no current U.S. headquarters.

None of those things are going to happen. What's going to be a much bigger deal is when 25 years from now new-Uber/new-Lyft has a fleet of 50 million level 4 self driving cars and the only people who need to own a car at all live in rural areas.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-28/cliffs-ceo-says-focus-after-arcelormittal-deal-is-emissions Some good tidbits in this. Eco friendly steel as a concept had never occurred to me. I’m guessing that’s true for most people. But if Cleveland Cliffs can make the concept well known and the steel affordable, how can electric car companies justify not buying it? These two moves may represent Cleveland Cliffs’s opening salvo at creating and cornering a brand new speciality market. If so, hats off to them.

Also also— why is this project $450 million? Lumen was about $225 per square foot for new build. This would be about $330 per square foot. Shouldn’t turning an existing building into cheap apartments be .... less expensive than building a whole new building of expensive apartments?

Also, ... running their apartment rental numbers and making some assumptions about the rates for office and retail space ... It looks like Centennial would realistically be getting maybe $10 million annually in rent assuming very high occupancy. At $10 mil. a year in rent, that's 1/45 of their construction cost. I'm not a skilled finance guy, but it's hard for me to see how they could pull that off without the TMUD. Interested if others have better perspective. Hopefully I am missing something, but let's compare it to the Lumen as an example. Vs. Lumen, you have more than three times the cost for less than three times the number of units, renting for way less on average. It's just hard for me to see how those numbers work without some big incentive.

^ Looks like it's still relying on the TMUD.... That makes me a lot less optimistic.