A private home was demolished earlier this year on Barber Avenue in Cleveland’s Ohio City, just east of the BVQ Lofts seen in the distance that was delivered by the same developer five years ago. Now the developer is turning his attention to a new construction project on the vacant land on the north side of Barber, west of West 25th Street and south of Train Avenue (Google). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.
Joy Court townhomes, Vega multifamily sought
An early indicator of an emerging real estate development is to see a request for unused public rights of way to be vacated. Another is a mass of properties being acquired by the same company in the same area. Yet another is to see decaying structures in that area be demolished. All three of those conditions are occurring on Barber Avenue at West 30th Street, at the south end of Cleveland’s Ohio City neighborhood.
As Ohio City increasingly lacks land north of the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority’s (GCRTA) Red Line to affordably redevelop, developers are looking to adjoining areas where they can invest. One of those areas is south of the tracks and the parallel Red Line Greenway trail, plus Train Avenue.
This area is attracting lots of development activity including St. Joseph Commons that opened in 2020 followed by the luxury Treo Apartments in 2023. Two apartment buildings are planned in the first phase of the Hub 27 development on West 27th Street. Sixth City Glazing is moving to Train at West 30th from suburban North Royalton. To the west, the former Leisy Brewery property is back on the market.
One of the development pioneers in this part of Ohio City is Ben Beckman who redeveloped the former J. Spang Bakery, 2801 Barber Ave., in 2019 into BVQ Lofts with 69 market-rate apartments.
But he’s had his eye on a couple of follow-on projects nearby — one is a small multifamily project on Vega Avenue. The other is a mixed development of perhaps a dozen for-sale townhouses and a potential 100- to 120-unit multifamily building. All would be new construction. And while this is all still very preliminary, the pieces for them are coming together.
In the BVQ (Barber-Vega-Queen) neighborhood, two potential development sites are highlighted in red while Seaton Woods’ BVQ Lofts are highlighted in blue (Google-KJP).
For a long time, he has been acquiring properties north of Barber and west of West 30th for a potential townhome development. Today, those parcels amount to nearly 2 acres of land — a large piece of urban land. Recently he put them all under the name of Joy Court Fee Owner LLC and under the development charge of his Seaton Woods Ventures LLC.
That’s where two former alleys would be vacated and absorbed by their adjacent property owners. City Planning Commission voted last month to support vacating the pair of public rights of way — Joy Court and Day Alley.
Beckman said he would also like to develop a 0.24-acre parcel he acquired five years ago as Vega Zone Assembly LLC at 2802 Vega Ave., overlooking Interstate 90. He considers that part of what he calls the BVQ (Barber-Vega-Queen) neighborhood, bounded by I-90, West 25th Street and the GCRTA Red Line.
“We are still working on preliminary land assembly for the Joy Court project, so plans are highly contingent at the moment,” Beckman said. “The overarching goal of my business is to create population density by providing new or renovated unsubsidized middle-income housing along major transit corridors to support mass transit and public education.”
A remake of the West 25th Street corridor with bus rapid transit, called the MetroHealth Line, is what has encouraged Seaton Woods to increase its investment along this corridor. This view looks north on West 25th Street from Interstate 90 and Vega Avenue (Google).
Beckman said he wants to invest here because of GCRTA’s pending $50 million MetroHealth Line project. At a media event yesterday, GCRTA officials said they plan to finish design work in 2025 and start construction in 2026 on the 4-mile bus rapid transit project along West 25th Street from Detroit Avenue in Ohio City to downtown Old Brooklyn. Construction will take two years.
More than half of the funding for that project has been raised but additional federal funds are needed for GCRTA to reach its goal. If reached, GCRTA will rebuild West 25th with a new streetscape, improved waiting environments for bus passengers, and traffic signal prioritization for buses to speed up transit trips.
“We are excited about the impact of those improvements on the BVQ neighborhood,” Beckman said.
Beckman has been encouraged by the leasing at his BVQ Lofts, which offers middle-income apartments close to restaurants, shopping, transportation and Downtown Cleveland. He said the market has room for more housing in this enclave.
Looking north on West 30th Street toward the intersection of Barber Avenue, BVQ Lofts is on the right while the Joy Courts townhome site is just beyond Barber and to the left of West 30th (Google).
“The Joy Court project will build on Seaton Woods’s completed BVQ Lofts building at 2801 Barber Avenue and our upcoming add-on multifamily project,” he said. “We hope to have a for-sale and a rental component to the project, both focused on our target middle-income demographic.”
He said he’s pretty much done with property acquisitions to move forward and has conducted land clearance and site prep work. That includes taking down the last house in the development site. That house was at 3012 Barber.
“We are always open to opportunities, but conceive of the project as being bounded by both Barber and West 30th Street,” Beckman said. “All structures on land we own were demolished in Spring 2024. Over the next year, the Joy Court project will move into some preliminary designs and a neighborhood charrette.”
Look for more details on this project in the coming months, including how and where to participate in the design charrette.
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