The Walton Apartments, a proposed 52-unit affordable housing development for seniors, is planned on a vacant lot on Clark Avenue, next to a Rally’s fast-food restaurant at Fulton Road. City planners said they hoped the project will lead more although few developments have been economically feasible here in recent years (RDL). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.
Planning commission wants more in Clark-Fulton
A planned affordable senior housing development at 3517 Walton Ave. in Cleveland’s Clark-Fulton neighborhood won universal praise Friday from the City Planning Commission. In fact, the commission considered it a potential game-changer for the neighborhood and especially Clark Avenue which, in this growing La Villa Hispana community, is lined with car-centric land use patterns, making it pedestrian-unfriendly.
One of the first things that makes this 52-unit apartment building on Clark different is that its vehicular entrance isn’t proposed to be on Clark. Instead, it would be on Walton, the next street north. Reducing the number of curb cuts on Clark — a haven of fast-food restaurants, gas stations and stand-alone stores, all with curb cuts and parking lots by the street — is seen by the commission as essential to improving that street’s walkability and urbanity like it once had.
In fact, five former residential parcels in the 3500 block of Clark that were vacated over the last 30 years were proposed to be developed in 2022 with a Taco Bell. The 1-acre site has become home to a parked boat-on-trailer that has sat there for five years, next to a Rally’s at the Clark-Fulton intersection. That fast-food joint was built on the site of Zannoni’s Food Service Distributors that was lured by tax abatement to North Ridgeville in 2007. Zannoni’s was razed in 2014.
“It’s an extraordinary project,” said City Planning Commission Chair Lillian Kuri. “It makes me really, really happy, especially with the Taco Bell gone. It could honestly change the game once built for what will come after it and how people are going to feel about that intersection.”
On Aug. 28, a neighborhood-level plan-review panel, the Near West Design Review Committee, also was very supportive of seeing the site redeveloped with affordable senior housing, said City Planning Director Joyce Pan Huang. Some of the comments from the neighborhood panel urged more landscaping by the entrance, additional glazing on the southwest side and brightening the materials. Next step for the design is to go back to planning commission for a final review.
This site plan, with the right side to the north, shows how the driveway from Walton Avenue with 18 parking spaces along it would go behind the Dollar General on Fulton Road and into the senior housing development on Clark Avenue. This image was rotated 90 degrees from the original to adjust to this Web site’s format. Some of the labeling was also rotated for clarity (RDL).
“In some ways, this is going to set the bar and change people’s perspective about what people could imagine. As funky as it is, I do love that the driveway is off Walton because I think a curb cut on Clark is just more of the same,” Kuri added.
The driveway to the Walton Apartments would have 18 parking spaces along it. But it would also require demolition of a vacant house on the site. That property is owned by the Cuyahoga Land Bank. The parcels on Clark are owned by E&J Investment Properties, LLC, an affiliate of the Serrat family of Westlake which owns the neighboring Rally’s property plus the Marathon gas station across Clark.
Völker Development Inc. of Fond Du Lac, WI has purchase agreements pending with the land owners and would develop the site. Greg Baron, Völker’s managing director of development for the Midwest region is overseeing the project. He told the planning commission he has some history with that site.
“The project is very near and dear to my heart,” Baron said. “I previously worked for Metro West (Community Development Organization) for about five or six years (2010-16). So I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the potential of this site. Fast forward to this year (when) we were successful in receiving an allocation of Low Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC).”
Völker won conditional approval in May from the Ohio Housing Finance Agency for a highly coveted and competitive 9 percent LIHTC that would subsidize about 70 percent of the Walton Apartments’ $15.9 million development cost. Völker will team up with Marous Brothers Construction of Willoughby to build the project. Another local firm, RDL Architects, is designing the apartments.
The north and south sides, called elevations, of the proposed Walton Apartments and its context to nearby buildings are visible in this slide from the Völker/RDL presentation given Friday to the City Planning Commission. The commission enthusiastically approved the preliminary design with few conditions (RDL).
Winston Hung, RDL’s project designer, said the proposed apartment building’s placement and layout seeks to restore some of the former street wall of buildings that once made this neighborhood safe and accessible for pedestrians and transit users. The building, designed to look like two structures, is placed next to the sidewalk and its first-floor residential amenities will be located toward the front of the building along Clark to give it more of a street presence.
“Looking at the front elevation (along Clark), with this massing we’re using a different color, different texture to kind of break up the massing,” Hung said. “And you see at the center, you see that recess and the recess of the entry to highlight that (entrance).”
Plans show the west façade will feature fibercement lap siding with corrugated metal siding near the windows and especially along the first floor. Utility brick would be used on the eastern half of the façade. The back of the building, facing the parking, would have some of those same materials albeit with greater use of vinyl siding.
The difficulty in delivering on the city’s desire for more affordable housing and density along and near Clark is evident. So far, only one such development has been achieved in recent years — the Northern Ohio Blanket Mill renovation. The 60-unit apartment building over ground-floor commercial spaces required a $1 million direct cash infusion from the city to bring it across the finish line earlier this year.
Two other projects fronting Clark have been elusive despite their sponsorship by reputable developers. One was Marous’ conversion of the former Pilsener Brewing Co. Bottle Works, 6605 Clark, into 39 apartments called Pilsener Square. For the other, The Community Builders sought to construct a new 50-unit apartment complex called Alta Villa Flats on 1 acre of mostly vacant land at the northwest corner of Clark and West 32nd Street.
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