A formal groundbreaking ceremony for the 23-story, roughly 250-foot-tall City Club Apartments in downtown Cleveland is planned for 11 a.m. Dec. 10. However, there are signs that site preparations in the 700-block of Euclid Avenue are about to begin (Vocon). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM
Shovels to hit the dirt Dec. 10 for downtown tower
ARTICLE UPDATED DEC. 2, 2021
Among the new Sherwin-Williams (SHW) headquarters, Fairmount Properties’ Fairfax Market/Apartments and the City Club Apartments, where was the betting line on the City Club tower officially breaking ground first? If you bet the last to be the first, you’re a winner.
Today, in a written statement, the Michigan-based City Club Apartments officially acknowledged it is organizing an 11 a.m. Dec. 10 groundbreaking ceremony in the parking lot at 720 Euclid Ave., although the project’s address will be 776 Euclid. This follows recent progress reported exclusively here at NEOtrans a couple weeks ago. That included City Club Apartments closing on financing and securing a building permit for the 23-story tower’s floating concrete slab foundation.
According to the statement from City Club, attending the groundbreaking will be City Club Apartments CEO Jonathon Holtzman, Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson, City Council members Kerry McCormack and Blaine Griffin plus Cleveland Construction, Vocon Architects and Mavik Capital.
However, when NEOtrans reached out to him earlier this morning, Holztman was not ready to make any public comments about the groundbreaking ceremony.
Vehicular entrances to the Euclid Avenue parking lot on which the City Club Apartments tower will rise were closed off this week in anticipation of pre-construction site preparations starting. The entrance from Euclid directed motorists to the Prospect Avenue entrance including to the garage behind. Access from the garage to the Euclid lot was also blocked off (KJP).
City Club’s groundbreaking ceremony will be held five and six days before Fairmount’s Fairfax and Sherwin Williams’ groundbreaking ceremonies, respectively. Although SHW has already started construction on its new headquarters this week, starting with site preparations.
City Club’s general contractor Cleveland Construction, based in Mentor but with a new office downtown, appears ready to start site preparations for the 304-unit, 250-foot-tall apartment building with ground-floor restaurant/retail spaces. The Euclid Avenue parking lot where the tower will rise had its vehicular entrances closed off this week and only a few cars remained in the lot. It’s one of the last downtown parking lots along Euclid Avenue to be developed.
In its written statement, City Club Apartments said its Cleveland high-rise, which it calls a community, will feature resort amenities including a rooftop pool, Sky Deck, Sky Club, Zen Garden, Bark Park, lobby library, professional fitness center and the integration of the latest and fastest connectivity technologies.
“The units will have 22 unique floor plans and four distinct finishes including granite countertops, custom closets, City Club Apartments-curated fixtures, plank flooring, sexy bathrooms, bay windows, terraces and balconies,” the company’s statement read. “With City Club’s Apartment Hotel concept residents are able to choose between short and long-term furnished and long-term unfurnished apartments. The community’s mix of uses will include a first-floor coffee shop, doggie daycare and a restaurant and speakeasy with outdoor dining.”
As of today, all but a few cars were removed from the parking lot in the 700-block of Euclid Avenue in downtown Cleveland where the City Club Apartments tower will reportedly see construction start soon. At left is the unrelated City Club Building with the Residences at 668 seen at the right. The 540-space garage behind the Euclid lot will serve as the parking for residents of the new City Club Apartments (KJP).
By spring, there will be several tower cranes over two downtown construction projects simultaneously — SHW HQ and City Club Apartments. The last time tower cranes stood over two downtown building projects at the same time was in 2019 when there were cranes over the 28-story Beacon Apartments, 515 Euclid, and the 34-story Lumen Apartments, 1600 Euclid. There are already large cranes at the SHW HQ site but they are mobile cranes, not fixed-position tower cranes that will rise taller than the buildings they are helping to construct.
Two weeks ago, sources close to City Club Apartments said financing for the roughly $100 million Cleveland development closed Nov. 19 which would allow construction to start in “a few weeks.” The availability of financing will also allow City Club Apartments, doing business as CCA CBD Cleveland, LLC (CBD refers to Central Business District), to close on the purchase of the half-acre parking lot on which the tower will rise. The property has been owned by GSK 720 Euclid, LLC & 720 Euclid Garage, LLC, an affiliate of the Goldberg family.
The Goldberg family will continue to own the six-level parking garage and the Prospect lot to the south of the tower. Under an agreement between City Club Apartments and the Goldberg family, apartment residents will use the parking garage. Not having to construct a new parking structure for the apartment tower is saving City Club Apartments at least $10 million, making the project financially feasible, the sources said. The project is next door to the City Club Building, which is unrelated to the City Club Apartments.
Additional construction permits have yet to be issued. Cleveland’s Chief Building Official Thomas Vanover sent an adjudication order to the building’s architects at Vocon Partners, LLC, denying a construction permit for the tower’s structure until 14 design issues or omissions in the plans are addressed or appealed. The denial will be appealed at an upcoming hearing of the city’s Board of Building Standards and Appeals, according to an entry on the building department’s Web portal. This is a routine procedure for projects of this scale, Vanover said.
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