The Collins Apartments, at left, are built on a former steel mill site along Carter Road in the Flats. The new development features 15 townhomes and two multi-family buildings and are now open to hard-hat tours by prospective tenants. More developments are rising on Scranton Peninsula across and down the street (KJP). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.
Collins at the Riverbend charts new residential course
For much of the past 50 years, Scranton Peninsula, across the curving Cuyahoga River from Downtown Cleveland, had become an increasingly desolate place. It saw its two largest industrial employers — Northern Ohio Lumber and Republic Steel’s Upson Nut Division — depart, leaving the 75-acre peninsula scarred and mostly vacant.
But a residential future is rising on the cleaned-up site. Here in the waning days of 2024, there is only one resident on Scranton Peninsula — the guy who lives on the houseboat docked next to Fire Station No. 21. By this time next year, things are going to be a lot different. In fact they already are. Now, you can go see it for yourself.
Hard-hat tours for prospective tenants of The Collins at the Riverbend Apartments, 1951 Carter Rd., began yesterday and signed the first tenant for the 315-unit housing development. The first move-ins will get underway on Jan. 7 at the south building. Called Building A, half of that building will open up first, said Jess Sparks, community assistant for Cleveland-based developer NRP Group.
On the tour are a pair of model units — a one-bedroom apartment and a two-bedroom suite — plus substantially completed portions of Building A which already has electricity. The next move-ins will happen in the rest of Building A in March with the remaining move-ins continuing to June. The Collins also has studios and three-bedroom apartments as well.
She said the Collins is booked for tours this week and next and has a list of more than 100 people who have expressed interest in an apartment before the leasing period began this week. The Collins’ Web site is also live, offering a platform where prospective tenants can schedule hard-hat tours, take virtual tours and view floor plans. The entire Collins development is due to be completed by June 2025.
Site plans show the Collins has two 150-unit multi-family buildings with horseshoe-shaped footprints so they look like four buildings when viewed down Carter. Five townhouses are also located along Carter, to the north of those buildings. Ten more townhomes are behind the multifamily buildings and book-end a two-level parking garage.
The five largest townhomes are four stories tall. They offer three bedrooms and three-and-one-half baths. The 10 smaller townhomes, albeit only about 400 square feet smaller, are three stories tall. They also have three bedrooms but two-and-one-half baths. All of the townhomes are for rent, not for sale, Sparks said.
In the larger townhomes, there is a secondary bedroom/office and two-car garage on the first floor with the living room and kitchen on the second floor. Two more bedrooms are on the third floor and a large rooftop deck with views of downtown is on the fourth floor. Smaller townhomes have external parking spaces and third-floor decks off the primary bedroom.
Although industrial relics remain on Scranton Peninsula, they are being overshadowed by the new residential development on the peninsula. That includes The Collins at the Riverbend Apartments, seen at far right in front of downtown’s skyline in this April view (KJP).
At the multi-family buildings, there are walk-out patios for units on the outer parts of the building, Rents range from $1,930 for the studios and up to the low-$5,000s for the three-bedroom suites. Those prices are comparable to other new, nearby buildings on the near-West Side like Intro in Ohio City and the Welleon in Gordon Square. Both of those leased out in a matter of just a few months.
This housing development wasn’t the first new big development on Scranton Peninsula. On the other side of the now-shuttered Flats Industrial Railroad is the BrewDog Cleveland Outpost, below the new location of Skylight Financial Group/MassMutual. BrewDog is welcoming their new neighbors with ongoing discounts.
“We’ve got a really great partnership with BrewDog,” Sparks said. “They’re going to be allowing us to have events there and we’re going to get resident discounts and specials over there as well. And we’re going to have a preferred employer discount for about 14 employers in the area, where they’re receive not only rent specials from us but a $100 gift card for BrewDog as well.”
This and other housing developments on Scranton Peninsula will create a neighborhood of more than 615 homes and about 1,000 residents. That includes the Silver Hills at Thunderbird development under construction across Carter from The Collins, plus the first two of 12 for-sale townhomes now underway at the Carter Road Subdivision farther south near Columbus Road.
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