^Those are fantastic, especially the middle one.

We need more buildings on Scranton Peninsula. I was hoping these latest posts would have something to do with that. Bummer....

Hopefully this means FCE will be selling its property on Scranton Peninsula soon, too!

 

Forest City sells 7.7 acres in the Flats to #CLE-area investor group that's eyeing development:

http://realestate.cleveland.com/realestate-news/2016/12/forest_city_sells_flats_proper.html

With all this investment at high prices in Duck Island and now over on Scranton Road in Tremont, one has to think that the market for developing Scranton peninsula has to be just as attractive.

I hope you're right, but tell that to Scranton-Averrill who would rather develop halfway houses and (not) maintain vacant buildings and property.

This has been a pretty good week for Cleveland development....

 

Forest City to sell Scranton Peninsula land to investor group eyeing development (photos, video)

By Michelle Jarboe, The Plain Dealer

on June 11, 2017 at 5:30 AM

 

 

CLEVELAND, Ohio - Forest City Realty Trust, Inc., bought a former steel-mill site along the Cuyahoga River in 1988 with visions of building a mixed-use project there. Almost 30 years later, that land, across the water from Terminal Tower on Scranton Peninsula, still lies vacant.

 

Now the publicly traded company is letting it go.

 

Forest City has agreed to sell its 25-acre slice of the peninsula for an undisclosed price, in a deal that could close in August or September. The buyer is an investor group led by Akron native Matthew Weiner, an attorney now based in Savannah, Georgia; Jesse Grant, a Cleveland transplant from Portland; and Fred Geis, one of the city's most active developers.

 

They're talking about housing and commercial projects - small offices or, perhaps, cleaner industrial uses. But the buyers won't discuss specifics yet. They've hired an international design firm to help them study the entire peninsula, which spans more than 50 acres, and craft plans.

 

MORE:

http://realestate.cleveland.com/realestate-news/2017/06/forest_city_to_sell_scranton_peninsula.html#incart_river_mobileshort_home

Think of how fast real estate moves on Duck Island just up the hill. That's what the potential is for this blank slate where you can literally build a small town from scratch.

Think of how fast real estate moves on Duck Island just up the hill. That's what the potential is for this blank slate where you can literally build a small town from scratch.

 

I was just thinking that. Pending the health of the soil in some spots, they literally have their choosing of what goes up and where. Theoretically they could make a brand new, walkable and insulated neighborhood very easily on 50 acres.

I have been obsessed with this piece of land forever as you might tell by some of my posts throughout this thread. I am excited that what seems to be a young developer has a vision and can see the opportunity. And having Geis involved is a definite plus. I just hope a portion of it will be open for the public to enjoy.  What I personally would like to see happen is the trail to continue around the whole perimeter as development is pushed outward toward the edges and the center portion becoming a usable public space with a ton of trees and recreational components.

I'd like to see a Tremont-Settlers Landing (Tower City) streetcar be established as part of whatever development they have in mind here. :)

^How could the WFL  be extended to the peninsula ?

^How could the WFL  be extended to the peninsula ?

 

Using the old Erie RR bridge next to the Carter Road bridge. Best part is that you don't need to add a bridge lift operator for the rail bridge. The Carter Road bridge operator can activate both lift bridges simultaneously.

 

But I wouldn't extend the Waterfront Line. I don't want RTA to be the sponsor and operator of the Scranton Peninsula/Tremont streetcar. The transit authorities in Cincinnati and Detroit weren't the sponsors of those streetcar projects either.

Think of how fast real estate moves on Duck Island just up the hill. That's what the potential is for this blank slate where you can literally build a small town from scratch.

 

I was just thinking that. Pending the health of the soil in some spots, they literally have their choosing of what goes up and where. Theoretically they could make a brand new, walkable and insulated neighborhood very easily on 50 acres.

 

That's one of the big issues with this site. Soil contamination and the remediation that will be needed.

^How could the WFL  be extended to the peninsula ?

 

Using the old Erie RR bridge next to the Carter Road bridge. Best part is that you don't need to add a bridge lift operator for the rail bridge. The Carter Road bridge operator can activate both lift bridges simultaneously.

 

But I wouldn't extend the Waterfront Line. I don't want RTA to be the sponsor and operator of the Scranton Peninsula/Tremont streetcar. The transit authorities in Cincinnati and Detroit weren't the sponsors of those streetcar projects either.

 

Couldn't SP own and maintain their portion of the tracks and agree through some long term a dollar a year lease to let RTA run on them.

I am just suggesting SP run a loop around the peninsula. Like a Columbia Park type thing.

I'd like to see a Tremont-Settlers Landing (Tower City) streetcar be established as part of whatever development they have in mind here. :)

 

Not being argumentative, I honestly just don't know how this would work given the incline between SP and Tremont.

 

I really know next to nothing about streetcars, but would that Scranton Rd Hill be manageable for such a vehicle?

I'd like to see a Tremont-Settlers Landing (Tower City) streetcar be established as part of whatever development they have in mind here. :)

 

Not being argumentative, I honestly just don't know how this would work given the incline between SP and Tremont.

 

I really know next to nothing about streetcars, but would that Scranton Rd Hill be manageable for such a vehicle?

 

Yes. Streetcars are terrific hill climbers. One could easily climb Columbus Road hill into Ohio City.

Of course, we should wait to learn what they want to build on Scranton Peninsula. Will it be low-density, single-family homes? Or a few heavily automated warehouses? Or will it be a true urban neighborhood with density and mixed uses that a streetcar could really provide benefits to and benefit from by linking it to Settlers Landing/Tower City in one direction and the Ohio City Red Line station/West Side Market or Tremont in the other direction?

The possibilities are endless.  This is likely a looooooooong term play.  I would love to see a mixed use neighborhood.  Ideally it would be heavily residential.  Knowing the reality of brownfields this might be built as a corporate campus too.  Perhaps this gets the quickest ROI fir the developers. 

Of course, we should wait to learn what they want to build on Scranton Peninsula. Will it be low-density, single-family homes? Or a few heavily automated warehouses? Or will it be a true urban neighborhood with density and mixed uses that a streetcar could really provide benefits to and benefit from by linking it to Settlers Landing/Tower City in one direction and the Ohio City Red Line station/West Side Market or Tremont in the other direction?

 

................. it would be within 1 Sq. Mile of a certain company's founding...............

I thought of that too.  I quickly discounted it since i would think that forest city would've tested that option before selling.

BTW I had this in the demo thread but this building at 1930 Scranton Rd., a part of Scranton Averell holdings is slated for demo.

Thanks to TPH2[/member] for finding and tweeting these!

 

Scranton Peninsula in the 1930s. It had to have been an incredibly dense and active mix of industry and railroad traffic as several very busy railroad lines traversed the peninsula back then, with frequent passenger and freight trains to Columbus, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Youngstown, Pittsburgh, Washington DC, New York (Jersey City) and more....

 

 

 

Property insurance map:

 

Wow. Those industrial buildings would have made for some really interesting adaptive reuse.

That mill was probably the biggest culprit of soot staining on Downtown buildings given its geographic location and proximity. Amazing photo.

Having a bit of environmental law in my practice... Those pictures pose a very real problem to some of the potential developments.

 

Many people are unaware of this, but just down the road (visible from 176), the Harshaw Chemical Company was used to enrich uranium during WWII as part of the Manhattan Project. Parts of the tales of the plant are extremely dark - as many of the more dangerous areas of the plant were staffed entirely by African Americans. The structure was in use for decades after but was only just torn down last fall. To be brutally honest, the land within a quarter mile each way of the former site is radioactive - the scary thing being that a) if you bring an radioactivity meter with you to parts of the towpath, you can pick up quite a bit of it, borderline extreme amounts on days when the wind is blowing; and b) there was a tributary that much of the run of rainwater from the plant trickled into - the effects might not have been substantial in anyways - terrifying nonetheless.

 

It is a well-known secret that this plant was a black eye for the city in environmental spheres, and I am told that the structure was only torn down after substantial external pressures on the landowners, city, county, and state.

 

Having said all that, perhaps unnecessarily, I think and hope there will be forces that be that make sure this soil is safe. Which, ultimately, is a great thing. Additionally, as far as I know, plants of that nature pale in comparison to the hazard of a Harshaw Chemical kind of structure. I just really hope that some external pressure stays applied and they run all of the soil testing necessary. If there is a builder/developer to do this the RIGHT way, it is certainly GEIS, so I have no doubt they will. I just wonder what - if any - limitations will encumber this property because of its soil.

I'm familiar with Harshaw Chemical and what they processed there. But I wasn't aware of the inhuman details of it. That's sick.

 

Regarding Republic Steel's Nut & Bolt division on Scranton Peninsula, they didn't actually produce steel there. The steel was produced upriver and brought in molten form to Scranton Peninsula by rail in hot metal cars, also called torpedoes, where it was poured into molds and shaped into their final products. So while I'm sure the soil beneath that plant isn't clean, it's probably a lot cleaner than if there was a blast, Bessemer, open hearth or other furnace on site that produced waste byproducts. There probably were a few foundries for re-heating steel through the shaping processes (hence the smokestacks and soot), but their waste byproducts were probably less toxic than those at the blast furnaces upriver.

 

BTW, note that the Republic Steel property is almost exactly the same as the ex-Forest City property. Too bad it's not the former Northern Ohio Lumber & Timber Co. properties now owned by Scranton-Averell. Those soils have to be relatively innocuous. S-A owns just about everything on Scranton Pen that Forest City did not, and they've been sitting on their properties for 40+ years....

 

Scranton Peninsula parcel map 2017 by Ken Prendergast, on Flickr

 

Great info KJP[/member] . Yeah, lumber yards are about as good as it gets for industrial usage with regards to soil health.

^ depending on the level of contamination, this site may only be suitable for other industrial or commercial uses.  Bringing highly contaminated sites to residential standard is extremely expensive from what I understand.  Perhaps someone with more understanding of brownfields could chime in.  ERocc?

^ depending on the level of contamination, this site may only be suitable for other industrial or commercial uses.  Bringing highly contaminated sites to residential standard is extremely expensive from what I understand.  Perhaps someone with more understanding of brownfields could chime in.  ERocc?

 

Look up the cost of making the Eveready Battery plant soil capable of being redeveloped into Battery Park. I have no doubts this site isn't as bad since no one was burying steel barrels of battery acid like they had at Eveready. Also notice that a large portion of the Scranton Peninsula is now buried under tens of feet of fill dirt and pulverized construction debris.

^ That is encouraging to know. 

Battery Park was capped with clean fill. This creates a barrier between the contaminated soil and the new homes. There are no basements. Everything is on a slab. Plus, every unit is a condo, even the single family homes. The master association actually owns the slab under each unit as a common element. This is intended to prevent individual units from digging down into the contaminated areas.

 

I am not saying the same approach will work for the Scranton Peninsula, but simply that there are options for remediation and mitigation.

Battery Park was capped with clean fill. This creates a barrier between the contaminated soil and the new homes. There are no basements. Everything is on a slab. Plus, every unit is a condo, even the single family homes. The master association actually owns the slab under each unit as a common element. This is intended to prevent individual units from digging down into the contaminated areas.

 

I am not saying the same approach will work for the Scranton Peninsula, but simply that there are options for remediation and mitigation.

 

Great info! Considering that the new owners plan to retain greenspace along the river and that the interior of SP already has a substantial amount of fill dirt on it, I have to wonder how much more would need to be done to meet the same standard as Battery Park (assuming the standards haven't changed much since, and that the soil toxicity at Battery Park was supposedly pretty bad).

 

Now if we could just convince Scranton-Averill to sell to Geis & Friends too.

^ depending on the level of contamination, this site may only be suitable for other industrial or commercial uses.  Bringing highly contaminated sites to residential standard is extremely expensive from what I understand.  Perhaps someone with more understanding of brownfields could chime in.  ERocc?

 

Look up the cost of making the Eveready Battery plant soil capable of being redeveloped into Battery Park. I have no doubts this site isn't as bad since no one was burying steel barrels of battery acid like they had at Eveready. Also notice that a large portion of the Scranton Peninsula is now buried under tens of feet of fill dirt and pulverized construction debris.

 

If this was the nut and bolt division, my concern is that they might have been doing plating there.  Plating chemicals can include chromium and even cyanide.  Zinc plating would be better as zinc itself is quite benign (pennies are made of it), but the chemicals used may be problematic.  Some plating chemicals make battery acid look like lemonade.

 

I've been out of this for awhile but the residential redevelopment standards at least used to be much tighter, for obvious reasons.

 

My gut feeling is to be more concerned about soil stability (especially after remediation) but I am not a civ-e so I would defer to those who are.

Having a bit of environmental law in my practice... Those pictures pose a very real problem to some of the potential developments.

 

Many people are unaware of this, but just down the road (visible from 176), the Harshaw Chemical Company was used to enrich uranium during WWII as part of the Manhattan Project. Parts of the tales of the plant are extremely dark - as many of the more dangerous areas of the plant were staffed entirely by African Americans. The structure was in use for decades after but was only just torn down last fall. To be brutally honest, the land within a quarter mile each way of the former site is radioactive - the scary thing being that a) if you bring an radioactivity meter with you to parts of the towpath, you can pick up quite a bit of it, borderline extreme amounts on days when the wind is blowing; and b) there was a tributary that much of the run of rainwater from the plant trickled into - the effects might not have been substantial in anyways - terrifying nonetheless.

 

It is a well-known secret that this plant was a black eye for the city in environmental spheres, and I am told that the structure was only torn down after substantial external pressures on the landowners, city, county, and state.

 

Having said all that, perhaps unnecessarily, I think and hope there will be forces that be that make sure this soil is safe. Which, ultimately, is a great thing. Additionally, as far as I know, plants of that nature pale in comparison to the hazard of a Harshaw Chemical kind of structure. I just really hope that some external pressure stays applied and they run all of the soil testing necessary. If there is a builder/developer to do this the RIGHT way, it is certainly GEIS, so I have no doubt they will. I just wonder what - if any - limitations will encumber this property because of its soil.

 

My dad was the environmental and safety director for Ferro Corporation.  Later on he did occupational safety work for Batelle and worked with depleted uranium.  While the latter has a worse rap than it deserves, WWII era enrichment is a different matter entirely. 

 

I'll see him this weekend and can get his views (if his grandaughter sits still enough).

Are there any floodplain issues on this site?

Thanks E Rocc. I knew you'd know about this stuff. Do you know when they started using plating?

 

FYI, the origins of the steel plant go back to the early 1860s, and is perhaps one of the oldest steel plants in Greater Cleveland. And I was wrong about this plant not having a blast furnace. It did have one until the early 1930s. The plant was ultimately shut down in the early 1980s.

 

Info:

http://crookedriverrails.blogspot.com/2016/07/republic-steel-bolt-nut-division-part.html?m=1

 

More info:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bourne-Fuller_Company

Are there any floodplain issues on this site?

 

There are not

I would think that unless Lake Erie floods, Scranton Peninsula would be ok from a flood plain standpoint.

I would think that unless Lake Erie floods, Scranton Peninsula would be ok from a flood plain standpoint.

 

Unless it was an historic flood like the 1913 flood which sent the contents of the Northern Ohio Lumber & Timber Co. out into Lake Erie. But there's been a lot of fill dirt added to the interior of Scranton Peninsula. And I'm hearing the rim of the peninsula will either remain parkland such as along Scranton Road or become parkland such as along Carter Road.

Thanks E Rocc. I knew you'd know about this stuff. Do you know when they started using plating?

 

I actually don't know if they plated on site.  But if they did, those are the issues.

I would think that unless Lake Erie floods, Scranton Peninsula would be ok from a flood plain standpoint.

 

Unless it was an historic flood like the 1913 flood which sent the contents of the Northern Ohio Lumber & Timber Co. out into Lake Erie. But there's been a lot of fill dirt added to the interior of Scranton Peninsula. And I'm hearing the rim of the peninsula will either remain parkland such as along Scranton Road or become parkland such as along Carter Road.

 

Was this 1913 flood caused by the same massive storm system that led to the Miami Valley flood that same year?

^ I've always understood plating to be about the worst prior use possible when doing an environmental assessment.

Was this 1913 flood caused by the same massive storm system that led to the Miami Valley flood that same year?

 

Yes, it was in March. And it permanently knocked out of service the last remaining operable sections of the Ohio & Erie Canal.

^ I've always understood plating to be about the worst prior use possible when doing an environmental assessment.

 

Well early days uranium enrichment has it beat.  Berylium's fun too.  But generally, plating would be the worse commonplace one.

Thought people might be interested in some photos from a previous Scranton Plan posted here years ago.  More photos available here:

 

http://www.calthorpe.com/content/cleveland-gateway-redevelopment-plan

As much as I'm a fan of a streetcar or light rail line linking the Ohio City and Settlers Landing stations, I'm as much of a critic of the Cleveland Skylift gondola concept. But one place where the skylift could work is connecting Scranton Peninsula over the river to Tower City Center.

There's a nice summary of several projects here:  http://www.duckislanddevelopment.com/

 

 

 

Pretty cool website. So if you build a bunch of $400,000 townhouses on spec in Duck Island and they sell in a matter of weeks, what do we think would be the market's response to development just down the hill on Scranton Peninsula?

 

Sorry -- had to ask after seeing that website's slideshow where Scranton Peninsula dominates as this wasteland in the foreground, between Duck Island and downtown.

Forest City Realty Trust sells key Flats land

 

A Scranton peninsula property with views of downtown where Forest City Realty Trust Inc. (NYSE: FCE.A) once discussed launching a 1,500-unit residential complex is the latest property shed by the Cleveland-based real estate developer.

 

Cuyahoga County land records show Forest City on Tuesday, Aug. 1, deeded the 20-acre site to EWAT Holdings LLC, which purchased the property with $5 million in loans.

 

Jesse Grant, a Cleveland-based townhouse developer in Tremont, signed the mortgage on behalf of EWAT. Through various partnerships, Grant has produced several eye-catching townhouse projects, including Tremont Black at West 10th Street and Fairfield Avenue.

 

 

http://www.crainscleveland.com/article/20170804/NEWS/170809868/forest-city-realty-trust-sells-key-flats-land

There's a nice summary of several projects here:  http://www.duckislanddevelopment.com/

 

 

 

Pretty cool website. So if you build a bunch of $400,000 townhouses on spec in Duck Island and they sell in a matter of weeks, what do we think would be the market's response to development just down the hill on Scranton Peninsula?

 

Sorry -- had to ask after seeing that website's slideshow where Scranton Peninsula dominates as this wasteland in the foreground, between Duck Island and downtown.

 

Looks like you will get your answer.

Developer Keith Brown is planning home sites along the south side of Carter road between Columbus and the trail.  There is already infrastructure for these added with the new road but project is apparently still up in the air. 

 

If I'm part of the group that just bought the chunk of land there, I might start at this south end with an apartment building. It's close to the trail and connects to the Columbus road neighborhood.  I also would dump truckloads of sand in the area between carter and the river to make an urban beach for the apt building residents.