A refined development plan for Downtown Lakewood was released after a potential grocery store tenant decided not to be part of the project. However, the developers intend to proceed, albeit with a smaller and multi-tenanted retail spaces on the ground floor facing Detroit Avenue. This view looks southerly from the intersection of Detroit and Belle avenues (Dimit). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.
Developers hope to break ground in Spring 2025
Developers of the proposed Downtown Lakewood mixed-use development said it was a mix of good and bad news that a grocery store chain backed out of the project. The good news is that the developers can proceed with a previous plan to offer a larger public plaza facing Detroit Avenue. The bad news was that revising the plans to accommodate the grocer cost the developers eight months of time and inflation in delivering the $100-plus-million project.
Seeking to redevelop the vacant site of the former Lakewood Hospital, 14519 Detroit Ave., are Casto Communities of Columbus and North Pointe Realty of Mayfield Heights. Many of the changes to the proposed development were focused on the building facing Detroit, called Building One, according to plans shown by Dimit Architects of Lakewood last week to a joint meeting of the city’s Planning Commission and Architectural Board of Review.
Those plans were received mostly positively by members of the two city panels, but they had lots of questions and feedback in the three-plus-hours-long meeting. As this was a design review only, no vote was taken. A follow-up meeting is scheduled for 6 p.m. Aug. 6 at Lakewood City Hall, 12650 Detroit. More planning detail is coming for future meetings, including a landscaping plan and traffic study.
Building One’s proposed retail footprint was reduced from a single 40,000-square-foot grocer space with 22-foot-high ceilings to multiple spaces totaling 27,000 square feet and ceilings up to 17 feet. And, the structure was reduced from six stories to five while gaining a 37-space covered parking area within it.
Most recent site plan for the proposed Downtown Lakewood development (Dimit).
Casto Vice President Kolby Turnock told city officials his firm was approached last November by a grocer he declined to identify about participating in the Downtown Lakewood project. He told the grocer they were all ready to submit their final development plan and didn’t want to slow things down. The project has gone through multiple design changes and two development teams.
“We kind of had a good relationship with them in previous deals that we did and so everybody felt comfortable in moving forward,” Turnock said. “Here we are seven, eight months later and they backed out. Needless to say, we were extremely disappointed.”
While it would have been financially beneficial to have a large anchor tenant for the site, he said a grocery store created some limitations to the design of the project. And redesigning the project without the grocer affected other parts of the project which is proposed to have 309 apartments, seven for-sale townhomes, and 622 parking spaces, all but 50 of which would be garaged.
“That (design change) can provide a little bit more life to the public space (facing Detroit),” he said. “We were eating into the plaza to accommodate that grocer’s size requirements. So on the flipside I think there are some good things that resulted by them exiting minus the lost time which, again, was very disappointing. But I think a pivot to this plan which was pretty easy for us to do not unlike the plan that we had two versions ago.”
Looking northerly along Marlowe Avenue, the proposed Building Four with a U-shaped footprint is in the foreground. Next is Building Three which has the parking garage, Building Two, to the west of It. Beyond is Building One which faces Detroit Avenue (Dimit).
Casto included Whole Foods stores in several other projects they’ve developed, and their average store size matches what was proposed for Lakewood. But Whole Foods has had a 37,000-square-foot store in neighboring Rocky River since 2015. Casto has also previously worked with Lucky’s and Dave’s markets one time each. Lucky’s has had a store in Cleveland’s Edgewater neighborhood next door since 2018; Dave’s tends to be too large to fit the Lakewood store’s description.
Paul Glowacki, principal at Dimit, said changes to Building One caused some design changes to other buildings in the Downtown Lakewood plan. The only structures largely unaffected were Building Three along Marlowe Avenue, east of the parking garage, and the seven townhomes at the southern end of the city-owned, 6-acre site.
The historic Curtis Block building on Detroit will transition from an apartment building entry to having mom-and-pop stores on the ground floor and apartments above. Building One will also have retail facades at the north ends of Belle and Marlowe. The 3.5-level, 535-space parking garage, called Building Two, will gain a little more green space along Belle with a little less space on the north side of it, he said.
“One really beneficial thing that happened is that we actually are now able to use that vehicular court between Building One and the parking garage as access on the lower level to the lowest level of the parking garage rather than have a secondary drive off of Belle which we had to have before because of trucks getting in and out for the grocer’s space,” Glowacki said.
One of the benefits of no longer having the grocery store in the project is that it frees up 13,000 square feet of space for a larger public plaza facing Detroit Avenue. This is the view of the proposed plaza from Detroit (Dimit).
Another notable change was to Building Four, a U-shaped building south of the parking garage. He said it was changed to keep roughly the same number of residential units in the development from 322 before to 309 now. The development plans are available for viewing at the city’s Downtown Lakewood project Web site.
“In losing that height, the story on Building One, what we did was, instead of having three separate buildings that were walk-up buildings for what we’re calling Building Four, now we compiled that into one U-shaped building that will have elevator access,” Glowacki added. “That’s no longer a walk-up building. It is still three stories and it still maintains the design of a very residential scale fabric both on Marlowe and on Belle.”
Some members of the committee said they had concerns about the scale of the U-shaped building, especially being located further into the neighborhood. Others suggested a design change to the architectural style of Building Three which could differentiate it more from the mixed-use Building One immediately north of it.
After Planning Commission and Architectural Board of Review give their final design approvals to the project in the coming weeks or months, the matter will go to City Council for its review. If council approves the plans by the end of the year, the project can then move toward final preparations for construction to start in the spring.
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