w28th

I was recently talking to a guy who's building new homes in Cleveland who said it's a pain in the butt to get things approved in the city of Cleveland. Plan approval for new home construction takes 7-14 days in Lake County. In Cleveland, they're averaging 200 days. 200 days just to get approved! Or to change an existing home plan, like the future owners wanting to extend a front porch or something: East side suburbs take days whereas he emailed the building guy in Cleveland 5 weeks ago and hadn't heard back yet when I spoke to him. Really disheartening to hear when so many positive things are happening in the city and people WANT to build here, but it's so hard to move things forward. Define "approval." If it took a home builder 200 days to get a house approved he's a terrible builder, has a terrible architect, and is doing things out of order. I work with the building department almost daily and find them to be quite responsive considering they are currently understaffed. Fire Marshal's office on the other hand...

This is unbelievable. It's no wonder the Clinic avoids physical engagement with the surrounding neighborhoods. This gives a black eye to the entire city in the eyes of developers in my opinion.

Sounds like this is to allow Whiskey Grade (retail shop on Jay) to sell motorcycles in their retail shop.

Interesting to see SHoP as the architect for just a rooftop signage project...

Yeah, don't want signage in a city.

Huron Square Deli has closed in the old Halle Garage. Might be part of the whole K&D redo for the main Halle Building.

Excellent point Strap. I can say, having worked on dozens of projects that have dealt with the current planning commission and design review panels in the past 4 years, they, for the most part were not part of the approval of the W58th project. There are many new planners in City Hall now, many of which are under 35 years old, who are putting an end to that kind of development. It simply wouldn't fly now. There are a lot of behind the scene planners that are positively impacting the process that you probably aren't aware of. Things are moving in the right direction, the revised zoning code is the most visible proof of that.

I'd say my post has a little more insight than a Cleveland.com post. It's a lovely photo of a terrible building set in the middle of what should be an active, dense urban block facing E22nd, Euclid & Prospect, that continues the building wall of the city eastward. Instead, it's none of those.

I'm less worried about SW moving there than I was yesterday. Before the current LeBron billboard they had a billboard that said "Cleveland: our home forever." God willing, I can't imagine much has changed since then.

You should show a picture of the Prospect intersection too.

Funny, I've had the exact situation (add in being priced out of Tremont); preferred Lakewood at first but there is literally no housing for sale in the entire city. Expanded our search to Cleveland Heights and Shaker Heights and are currently in processing for a house in the Fernway neighborhood. I think a lot of potential buyers have this same scenario. Fernway is great little neighborhood, reminds me of the north of Lakeshore Boulevard section of Euclid along the lake a bit (smaller, well maintained houses from the 20's). Excited about the rapid connections to downtown and west side and proximity to the Shaker Lakes. Good luck.

Photo 10 of 15 makes E22nd look pretty dense. Am I missing something or was there some serious demo? Or is that an older St. Vincent Hospital that was actually built up to the street. Not to mention old St. Joseph's along Woodland in the background.

That's just a (poorly designed) place holder. Clearly someone spending a million dollars on a house is going to want to get an architect on board and design it for themselves.

I will say that nearly all of Geis's projects lack a certain level of sophistication and class. It's all so gaudy and overbearing in my opinion. Not sure what to think of him being on planning commission.

Anything other than the kitchen and bathrooms is cheap space to build, hence the high price per sf for a house that doesn't have much space.

They can go as high as they want generally, it would have to get a variance of course, but I'm sure any of these dense projects need variances due to our ridiculous zoning code any way.

I'd say the Hanna Fountains (when they worked) era was the best iteration of the Mall. Most active.

What are we looking at?

I've heard this rumor from a good source too, though it was several months ago.

Very often Notices of Non-Conformance list things that the developer will end up doing, it's just that the architect didn't show them on the generally conceptual plans. I'm sure they will end up removing that variance request from the project.

Also would have been nice if "The 9" took a spoon-fed great name and named a bar or restaurant "The Breuer"

^Edgecliff between East 204 and East 219 is pretty amazing. Spent a couple years as a kid on E214th.

It does not. Each space including drives and ramps is 320sf per space to determine a rough overall square footage.

Nice write up KJP. Not to nit pick but a parking space is typically 9'x18' so your square footage for the parking would be at least 2 to 2.5 times the estimate when including ramps and lanes.

The building at the corner of Scranton and Willey was taken down yesterday to make way for The Lincoln.