The corner of Detroit Avenue and West 74th Street in Cleveland’s Detroit-Shoreway neighborhood could regain more of its urban settings in a couple of years with the construction of the Watterson-Lake project and encourage further restorations of the urban fabric in the area (Stantec). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.
Landmarks OKs project after years of redesigns
Efforts by city officials to repopulate Cleveland neighborhoods don’t always go smoothly when residents and community officials have gotten used to not having people, density and activity around for decades. But a mixed-use project intended to restore some of that urbanity got approved today by the Landmarks Commission in a contentious meeting.
In voting 7-3 to award a certificate of appropriateness to the Watterson-Lake redevelopment, the commission gave a green light to a development team led by Bridging the Gap LLC based in Pittsburgh to advance the 136-unit affordable housing development with ground-floor commercial uses and public spaces with a playground and community room.
The 2-acre site of the former Watterson-Lake School building will also have three commercial spaces fronting Detroit. From west to east, they are proposed to be an office for Fass Real Estate Services management and leasing, Indigo Cafe Powered by Unbar, and Coyocan Taqueira & Brew, according to the site plans.
Those plans required a certificate from the Landmarks Commission which determines if a new or renovated structure contributes or detracts from an historic or landmark district. This site is located in the Gordon Square Local Landmark District. It is also across West 74th Street from the Franklin-West Clinton Historic District.
Site plan and ground-floor uses in the Watterson-Lake development. Detroit Avenue is to the right, or north. Blue is the ground-floor commercial spaces. Orange is the residential including six for-rent townhomes at left. Red is a community room for use by residents of the entire neighborhood. Brown is the playground. And green is green spaces (Stantec).
“The project has went through a pretty robust process to get the project as well as the design to this point,” said Derrick Tillman, CEO and president of Bridging the Gap. “We’re very excited about that as well as to share more details about it. We feel like we’ve done a good job of synthesizing all of that input to really come up with a best project as it stands to date. We remain committed to being a good community partner and really just a good developer hopefully as the project moves forward.”
The developer and its co-developer, the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority, won a request for proposals (RFP) from the city in 2023. That proposal gave extra points to proposals that had density, mixed-use, public spaces and added more than 120 housing units. Only one other developer responded to the RFP but it lacked public spaces, said Ward 15 Councilwoman Jenny Spencer.
Prior the meeting, the commission received a mix of input from the community about the project. While some said they welcomed the project to restore a once-densely developed intersection of Detroit and Lake avenues, others had concerns over the scale of the development, the addition of traffic, parking, drop-off locations and the small size or placement of public spaces.
Yet, all but one commissioner, Michele Anderson, welcomed the project’s scale and density. The opposition of two commissioners, Chair Julie Trott and member Mark Duluk, came in regards to the placement of public spaces or whether the project should step down at the south end, into a neighborhood of one- and two-family houses.
An aerial rendering looking southwest toward the Watterson-Lake Apartments with Detroit Avenue at lower right. Currently vacant, the site is between West 74th and West 75th streets (Stantec).
But after two years of going back and forth on design changes, enough commissioners decided it should move forward and leave the design details to the city’s planning staff and the development team to resolve. Those details included the ratio of parking vs. green space, relocation of underground storage tanks to expand landscaping in consultation with the city’s arborist, and develop signage for visitor parking and drop-off areas.
“The developer has been responsive to input from the city, its commissions and the neighborhood,” said commission Vice Chair Robert Strickland. He said his daughter has lived a block away from the Watterson-Lake site for nine years and noted that traffic in the neighborhood has “diminished considerably” since the school closed in 2019.
The original, historic Watterson-Lake School was built in 1912 on Detroit at West 74th. In 2015, the historic building was demolished by the Cleveland Metropolitan School District due to severe disrepair and the presence of asbestos. The modern elementary school building behind it, built in 1970 but closed in 2019, was demolished in 2023. The city and school district traded lands, with a new Marion Seltzer Elementary School being developed at Cudell Commons Park.
“This project is a big deal for my community because it is a large tract of publicly owned land,” said Spencer who lives several blocks from the site. “So this has long been considered a really rare opportunity.”
The Watterson-Lake development as viewed from the intersection of West 74th Street and West Clinton Avenue. At right is the apartment building, at left are the six townhomes and in between is the public space including a community playground (Stantec).
She noted the letters and e-mails sent by residents to the commission show there is no community consensus for this project. Personally, Spencer said she was opposed to the site plan that was presented at a community meeting just last month. She also urged that the new building be “stepped down” at the south end so that it is less imposing to the neighborhood.
“I feel much more comfortable with the current site plan iteration,” Spencer told the commission. “That said, there is still some more work to do. This project has come a long way. But let’s make it the best it could possibly be.”
The developer and two city officials said the building could not be scaled back without putting its financing, especially Low Income House Tax Credits (LIHTC) from the Ohio Housing Finance Agency (OHFA), and thus the entire project, in jeopardy. Tillman said expanding the public spaces, which don’t produce revenue, at the expense of housing would compromise the project.
“The density allows for the whole project to work, to be able to support the debt component and to support all of the community components we committed to doing, and the fact that we already received the tax credits — yes that (reduction in scale) would definitely jeopardize the project,” he said.
Six for-rent townhomes are proposed on West 74th Street so that the development “steps down” into the adjoining neighborhood (Stantec).
“As part of that process we had to submit (to OHFA) a market study that aligned with the exact unit count to tie into the pro-forma (financing statement),” Tillman continued. “So the density is something that cannot be changed. That density was in alignment with what the (city’s) RFP actually called for.”
Anthony Bango, the bureau chief of housing and development in the city’s Department of Community Development, concurred with Tillman. He said that once OHFA approves an initial application so a project can advance through the design-review process, the housing unit count is “locked in stone” before making a final approval.
“A project of this magnitude and scale has been a longshot from the get-go,” Bango said. “It’s really difficult to cobble these sources together and the environment around the Ohio LIHTC tax credit was extremely competitive. But the developer has put in a great effort to assemble sources and they’re pretty close from a financial perspective to closing. I’ve been in the industry 10 years. I’ve never once heard of OHFA allowing a decrease in unit count.”
Spencer said that her “true north” for this project was to bring more affordable housing to the neighborhood. The Gordon Square area has seen a lot of luxury housing developments, to the point that the gentrification risks forcing some lower-income people out of the neighborhood and away from shopping districts and corridors with frequent transit like Detroit Avenue.
Additional views of the planned Watterson-Lake development including a community room for the surrounding neighborhood shown in the image at lower-right (Stantec).
Nate Lull, city planner for the Far West neighborhoods, said the the City Planning Commission supports the Watterson-Lake project because it will maintain the neighborhood’s increasing racial and income diversity, maintain access to greenspace and promote sustainability.
“We’ve seen a lot of rapid growth in this neighborhood and understand that there’s a lot of concern among residents to having more people living around them and the potential challenges of coexisting in the neighborhood,” Lull said.
“It’s a walkable, transit-oriented and vibrant neighborhood that people desire to live in,” he continued. “To combat the pressures on housing and affordable housing, we feel very strongly that if more units are not created to meet the demand, that housing costs are going to continue to increase in this neighborhood.”
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