The area outlined in red including an elevator suffered structural damage from a car crash early in the morning Oct. 31, 2024. Also, the bollard next to the arrow sign at left was damaged along with the sidewalk. All of those items will be restored to their original condition by September (Google). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.
Repairs to finish 10 months after car crash
Just after 3 a.m. on Halloween 2024, an Audi crashed at high speed into a section of the INTRO mixed-use complex, at 2050 Gehring Ave. in Cleveland’s Ohio City neighborhood. While the driver wasn’t seriously hurt, the damage to the structure was so severe that two restaurants, Pioneer and Jaja, affected by the crash are still closed and repairs won’t be completed until 10 months after the initial impact.
That’s according to documents submitted to the city’s Building Department yesterday by the property owner, as part of its insurance claim. The documents show that the property damage from the crash amounted to $260,000 — about $100,000 for the demolition and removal of damaged structures and $160,000 for reconstruction work.
The area of the building damaged by the crash is a two-story section totaling 1,500 square feet. It includes a louvered cover of the garage exhaust system, an elevator shaft and its elevator, stairwell, drywall, paint/coverings, second-level patio doorway, several windows, sidewalk, bollard and signage, according to a Building Permit Submission Narrative by Pierce Capone, preconstruction manager for Harbor Bay Builders.
Harbor Bay Builders is a general contractor and subsidiary of Northbrook, IL-based Harbor Bay Ventures which was the developer of INTRO. The property owner is Ohio City Legacy LLC, also a Harbor Bay affiliate. The two damage-affected restaurants are also Harbor Bay companies. They are located across Lorain Avenue from the West Side Market.
Locations of reconstruction area, materials storage boxes, trash container and construction equipment storage area along Gehring Avenue next to INTRO. Lorain Avenue is along the left side of this image (Bialosky-HPA).
Reconstruction plans show that a construction fence will be erected on the Gerhring sidewalk around the worksite. It is noted on the plans that Harbor Bay seeks to have the fence up from March to September. After the repair work is done, both the Pioneer and Jaja restaurants will be cleaned by a licensed contractor.
Also, occupying five parking spaces on Gehring next to the building will be two Conex shipping containers, a Dumpster and a storage area for a forklift. The trash bin and forklift storage area are scheduled to be there from March to August, but the Conex boxes are due to be on site in June and July only, plans show.
NEOtrans e-mailed Capone to learn when the restaurants might reopen and why one or both can’t open sooner. But he didn’t respond prior to publication of this article.
“After the elevator hoistway is reconstructed and supporting MEPFP (Mechanical, Electrical, Plumbing and Fire Protection) requirements are met, Schindler will deliver and install the new elevator,” Capone wrote in his narrative. “Major alteration to the building and/or structure will not be required to replace the elevator.”
Numerous crash-damaged features, identified with yellow-shaded text, must be removed so that new features can be installed. The building’s original architectural drawings by Bialosky Cleveland are being used to guide the demolition and reconstruction work to restore the structure to its original, 2022-built condition (Bialosky-HPA).
“The original Level L1 and L2 garage ventilation system is code compliant and is intact,” wrote Daniel Bauer, vice president of K Company, an Akron-based heating, air conditional and ventilating business, in a December 2024 letter to Harbor Bay. “The system currently runs at approximately 15 percent, exceeding minimum code compliant ventilation.”
“During construction, the owner will override the system to ventilate at 50 percent capacity to keep the conditions in the garage and in the shaft well ventilated and constantly below alarm conditions,” he added. “In this manner, both tenants and workers will be protected against harmful exhaust fumes due to constant dilution.”
A copy of Bauer’s letter was included in the general contractor’s public record filing with the city along with all of the original architectural blueprints by Bialosky Cleveland for the entire INTRO building.
INTRO, completed in 2022, measures 512,000 square feet and is nine stories tall. It is one of the tallest mass timber buildings in the nation. The mixed-use property has 298 market-rate apartments, 35,000 square feet of retail space on the ground floor and 12,000 square feet of event space on the top floor.
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