Flats East Bank Phase II plans approved by Planning Commission; groundbreaking to start soon

Drawing on the energy created by the opening and tenancy of the new Ernst & Young Tower, the Flats East Bank project pushes forward with a 243-unit residential component next to the river. The City Planning Commission approved their plans this month and groundbreaking is expected to happen within weeks.




Here are some fast facts about the next phase of the project:

• 243 residential units
• 130-175,000 square feet
• 246 indoor parking spaces
• Direct access to adjacent Waterfront Line rapid transit station
• 10-15 restaurants and retail spaces
• Riverfront boardwalk
• Lake views
• $120 million price tag
• Part of a larger 23-acre complete ground-up redevelopment of the east bank of the Flats, bounded by downtown Cleveland, the Cuyahoga River and Lake Erie.

Downtown Cleveland Alliance releases 4th quarter 2013 report

Downtown living and working is rising again in the Comeback City.

Downtown Cleveland Alliance has just released their quarterly residential and commercial market update for the city's central business district. Included is a detailed analysis of  market trends and developments, as well as highlights of downtown's most exciting completed and ongoing projects.

Read the full report here.


Key takeaways:

Housing

•  457 brand new units came online, representing 9.7% growth

• 1,133 housing units will come online in the next 24 months, representing a 21% increase

• Per-square-foot rents increased from $1.14 to $1.20

• 11 straight quarters of 95% housing occupancy

• Condo sales prices up 25% per square foot

• DCA  projects downtown population to reach 15,000 by the end of 2015

Hotels & Tourism

• 1,787 hotel rooms coming online by 2016, representing a 50% increase

• The Global Center for Health Innovation is set to open to the public in summer 2014

• The Cleveland Convention Center has hosted more than 100 events in the six months since its opening

Offices

• Major surge in office vacancy absorption in 4Q2013 - 255,000 - more than Pittsburgh, Washington, D.C., and Portland

•  Ernst & Young Tower, the city's newest skyscraper, reaches 90% occupancy only six months after opening

• Total downtown vacancy is down to a three-year low of 18.2% despite Eaton Corporation moving its 250,000 square foot headquarters to the suburb of Beachwood

Most remarkable is the continued growth in demand for downtown housing products. Despite the supply increasing at a consistent 10% per year, per-square-foot rents have not fallen, even as rents fall in the suburbs. This indicates that the demand for urban living in this region is here to stay and is only going to become more popular.

Red-hot rental market fuels ambitious new downtown development projects

Freshwater Cleveland just posted a downtown-and-vicinity development roundup article that highlights some of the more unique features of the currently ongoing projects.

These are the projects that are mentioned:

1. Fairmont Creamery (Tremont)
2. The 9 at the Ameritrust Tower/Rotunda (Downtown) including Heinen's grocery store, restaurant, live theatre, hotel, apartments and 29th-floor "sky bar"
3. M.T. Silver Building lofts (Campus District).

Fire at Fairmont Creamery; developer says show must go on

Just recently I posted a story about the project to renovate the Fairmont Creamery into apartments, office space and a gymnasium. Turns out there's some news about the construction site:

Marvin Fong, The Plain Dealer

By Cory Shaffer | Northeast Ohio Media Group 
Email the author | Follow on Twitter 
on January 24, 2014 at 9:57 AM, updated January 24, 2014 at 1:13 PM
 CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Firefighters braved near zero degree temperatures to tame a major fire ignited by construction crews at a former creamery, officials said.

Crews arrived at the Fairmont Creamery building on Willey Avenue across from the Cleveland APL about 7 a.m. Friday, department spokesman Larry Gray said.

Gray said the fire started on the building's third level. Workers converting the long-vacant creamery into apartments were thawing the heating source to large coolers with torches, and accidentally ignited one of the coolers, Gray said.  

Read more...

According to this Crain's article, the developers are claiming that this will not affect the project's goals.

Fire at Fairmont Creamery shouldn't affect its makeover, developer says
By STAN BULLARD10:05 am, January 24, 2014
(This story was updated at 1:00 p.m.)
Cleveland firefighters late Friday morning still were on the scene of the fire at the former Fairmont Creamery building and will be there through the early afternoon because substantial smoke and steam continues to stream out of the vacant structure, said Larry Gray, Cleveland Fire Department public information officer.
Read more...

The Fairmont Creamery will soon be converted to 30 residential apartments, 13,000 square feet of commercial space, and a 12,000 square foot athletic club. The property is expected to be fully leased and stabilized by spring of 2015 (but maybe that timeline will now be extended. Read more about the project here.

Grand cycling plans in UC and Greater Cleveland

Here are two recent articles addressing cycling infrastructure needs and plans in the Cleveland area.

University Circle-Cleveland Heights bike, bus links on the radar
By Alison Grant, The Plain Dealer Email the author | Follow on Twitter on January 10, 2014 at 9:00 AM, updated January 10, 2014 at 9:04 AM
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- University Circle bills itself as Ohio's "most spectacular square mile," a fabulous stew of education, medical, arts and religious institutions in one city neighborhood.
But its cultural and employment magnetic powers have naturally enough attracted other developments that aren't as great – growing rush-hour traffic jams and parking shortages.
Two of the district's biggest players –- University Circle Inc. and the city of Cleveland Heights -- are taking a fresh look at how to address the transportation crunch by strengthening bikeways and bus service.
Their goal: Convincing some of the 3,300 or so people who live in Cleveland Heights and work in University Circle to make the short trip by something other than single-occupant cars. 

Read more

Although I'm a little more than puzzled as to why the government would spend any money painting lines in East Cleveland or north of the Circle, where no one drives, bikes or lives anyway, the overall plan for improving the Coventry bicycling experience could mean a tremendous boon (and a reduction in traffic).

Here's an old Google Maps image of one of the recently improved bikeways (this is a before picture!)

View Larger Map

I used to cycle up this hill every day from class. If it wasn't steep enough, it was also full of potholes and speeding traffic. What a nightmare!

Cleaning this road up made for a far improved, smoother, and safer ride, especially when bike traffic develops (and it does!). As far as I know, this is the only bike infrastructure improvement project that has been executed to date in the area, with the exception of the Euclid Avenue bike lanes to the west.

The majority of the "infrastructure plan" involves painting these funny icons on the roads:

Creative Commons: David Baker Architects

These are called "sharrows," and are intended to "[a]lert motorists of the lateral location bicyclists are likely to occupy within the traveled way..." (Wikipedia), among other things. While I suppose this reduces the incidence of angry motorists sticking their head out of their car window, yelling, "Get off the road!", it doesn't sit particularly well with this author as a solid solution to the perceived issue of bicycle safety. No separate travel lane is created, and in many cases, parking is still allowed in the sharrow right-of-way, which completely defeats its purpose.

Applause for the forward thinking, but forgive me if I'm a bit critical of the true impact this will make on cycling in the Circle. More lanes, fewer sharrows, please.

A second article to consider:
Cleveland plans to add 70 miles of bikeways by the end of 2017

By Alison Grant, The Plain Dealer Email the author | Follow on Twitter on January 19, 2014 at 6:07 PM, updated January 20, 2014 at 10:05 AM 

CLEVELAND, Ohio-- The city of Cleveland plans to more than double the amount of bike-friendly routes in town, adding 70 miles of dedicated lanes, trails and pavement markings by the end of 2017.
An update of Cleveland's bikeway plan, introduced Sunday at the annual meeting of the advocacy group Bike Cleveland, showed almost 45 miles of bikeways added over the next two years, and another 25.6 miles in the following two years.
The overall goal is to connect every Cleveland neighborhood to a bikeway network, said Jenita McGowan, the city's chief of sustainability.

Not much to say here, as the plan isn't very specific about the types of improvements being made. There's one question that arises here: we have a chief of sustainability?

As much as I love cycling, I can't help but think that applying the "sustainable" label to the activity screams "fruitcake!" It's a soundly economical and healthy decision before we even get to addressing climate change or pollution. We need to legitimize this activity by presenting it as a prudent alternative to transport by automobile. Pollution is inefficient and wasteful. Reducing it makes us all wealthier.

Religion standing in the way of progress - Clinic style

This is what the inside of a half-demolished church looks like:

The Church of the Transfiguration, a designated Cleveland landmark, has been a battleground between citizen activists and the growing, land-hungry Cleveland Clinic. Demolition finally started Friday in quick order. Rumor has it that the Clinic plans to build a Holiday Inn on the 0.83 acre location at 8604 Euclid Avenue.

Evidently the church was already crumbling when it became the subject of a protracted 5-year legal battle that finally ended in 2011 when the for-sale signs went up. Estimates came in between $6 and $8 million to restore the church to its 'former glory.' I suspect I'm not the only one who is a bit skeptical about that number.

Another church to be flattened by the bulldozer:
the Euclid Avenue Church of God.
Credit: The Plain Dealer

The Clinic is the undisputed heavyweight in this area, which is bordered to the north and south by some pretty rough neighborhoods. Even in this area, with a multitude of poor land uses like seas of parking lots and even nearby vacant lots, the Clinic doesn't have try very hard to paint itself as the bad guy in this situation. It seems they would like to knock down every historic building within a five-mile radius. Across the street, owners of the Euclid Avenue Church of God also secured a demolition permit, no doubt with the Clinic in mind as an end buyer.

Wow, Clinic, if you want vacant land why don't you just buy and demolish that raggedy Burger King next door? Isn't fast food against your policy anyway?

It's something of a wonder that an organization like the Cleveland Clinic, the hospital that bills itself as a progressive champion of the city, could promote such wholesale demolition in favor of positively suburban office park land uses in a very busy residential area. East 105th and Euclid Avenue was once known as Cleveland's second downtown, and the site of the very first electric traffic light. What does this place look like now? Big grassy areas, empty plazas, and concrete and glass boxes of buildings. No doubt we're going to get more of the same in the years to come.

If this is economic progress, I want my money back.

West Shoreway Boulevardization Project

For many years, the powers have be have been planning to reduce the West Shoreway, also known as Route 2, from a limited-access highway to a tree-lined boulevard. This short, 2 mile freeway runs from Clifton Blvd. to downtown, enabling easy access to downtown chiefly by Lakewood residents. The new plan intends to allow easier access to the lake shore from the emerging Detroit-Shoreway neighborhood (named for its primary thoroughfares - Detroit Ave. and the West Shoreway).

As the above summary indicates, it appears that this project as well as the rise of the popularity of Detroit-Shoreway has spurred the proposal of no fewer than five mixed-use projects, some of which are already underway (like the Battery Park residential development). These projects are taking advantage of the critical mass created by the Gordon Square Arts District. Also deserving of honorable mention is 78th Street Studios, a group of over 40 galleries, art studios and creative spaces within a single building, located within the area designated with a "1."

As the Detroit-Shoreway gentrification marches westward toward the Lakewood city line, better access to Edgewater Park and the waterfront can only be a further boon for the neighborhood.