The Shoreway Tower at right, and the current Shoreway Apartments at left, are shown here from the north side, overlooking the Shoreway boulevard and Edgewater Park in Cleveland. Construction is now getting underway on the site (EAO). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.
Permit issued for Edgewater-area high-rise
Nope, it’s not an April Fool’s Joke. Construction work is getting underway this week for Cleveland’s next new high-rise residential building. But it’s not rising downtown or in the University Circle area. Instead, crews are assembling equipment, materials, portable toilets, utility relocations and more on a bluff overlooking the Shoreway boulevard and Edgewater Park.
Work is starting on the 13-story Shoreway Tower, 1200 W. 76th St., at the western edge of Cleveland’s Gordon Square neighborhood. The project includes updating the adjacent four-story, 45-unit Shoreway Apartments, repurposed in 2014 from the 1918-built Globe Machine and Stamping Co. On its ground floor is the Good Company casual restaurant and bar.
Site preparation is starting for a 110-unit, market-rate apartment tower atop a two-story parking garage with 169 stalls and 4,000 square feet of ground-level commercial space. On the roof of the garage will be a swimming pool and grilling patio overlooking Lake Erie’s shoreline. The rooftop deck will be for use by residents of the new tower and the renovated Shoreway building.
“Construction is underway now that we have our permit,” said Adam Comer, director of development at Tremont-based J Roc Development LLC, in an e-mail to NEOtrans. “There is a lot of excitement from the community to see this tower built, and we’re excited to bring it to life.”
When the Porta-Potties show up at a construction site, you know it’s the real deal. Work crews and a new trash bin were also on site. That was the scene this morning at the north end of West 78th Street where the Shoreway Tower is about to rise (KJP).
A construction permit was issued by the city on March 26 according to public records for the Shoreway Tower. That followed a Dec. 30, 2024 permit issuance for First Energy to remove a permanent transformer, set up a temporary transformer and re-feed the existing Shoreway Apartments. The temporary transformer was installed in early March.
“This temporary (electrical) service will be in place until permanent power is established as part of the large Shoreway Tower project,” wrote Anthony Valencic, director of pre-construction services at John G. Johnson Construction Co. of Cleveland in the application. The construction firm is the project’s general contractor.
J Roc owns a strip of land along West 78th Street where construction site access and staging will occur. But it may be a while — possibly not until the second half of this year and especially into next year — before passersby on the Shoreway or visitors to Edgewater Park will notice the new tower emerging from atop the bluff.
“We anticipate completing construction by February 2027,” Comer said.
Southwest corner of the Shoreway Tower is shown here with the existing Shoreway Apartments seen just beyond it (EAO).
Within a mile of Lake Erie’s shoreline, this will be the first building of more than nine stories located between Cleveland’s Ohio City neighborhood and Lakewood’s Gold Coast. Depending on who you talk to, there has been either excitement or concern that this could set the stage for more like it, especially in the aging industrial area next to the Shoreway Tower site.
Nearby to the south are several other planned apartment developments. They include the 136-unit Watterson-Lake Apartments, the long-awaited Karam Senior Living and Walz Library, 7918 Detroit Ave., and the Detroit Avenue Apartments, 7511 Detroit Ave. But none are more than five stories tall.
Combined cost of the new-build Shoreway Tower and renovation work is estimated about $92 million. Based on taxable lease bond issuance legislation approved last July by the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority board, construction cost for the tower itself was estimated at $85.5 million.
In recent months, NEOtrans has been following on the city’s Building Department web portal a large amount of back-and-forth filings — 40 so far — between the developer J Roc and the city’s staff for the Shoreway Tower.
View from one of the apartments near the top of the Shroeway Tower, looking easterly toward Downtown Cleveland in the distance and the Battery Park powerhouse smokestack in the foreground. Lake Erie is to the left (EAO).
The myriad of public record documents include initial design filings, adjudication orders by the city, design modifications or clarifications, more adjudication orders, additional refinements by the developer and so on.
The site is made more complicated by sewer, street and railroad easements that go back to the 19th century. And there is the coordination between the new tower and the existing Shoreway Apartments, plus the variety of building code requirements affecting the existing and proposed uses.
But this isn’t J Roc’s first dance to construct something in Cleveland. Not only did it convert and renovate the former Globe Machine into the Shoreway Apartments, it recently completed construction of the 100-unit Driftwood Apartments at 1209 Fairfield Ave. in Tremont. NEOtrans broke the story of that project in 2022.
J Roc in 2021 built the Electric Gardens apartments in Tremont. And, nearby, it is pursuing a large hillside development overlooking the Cuyahoga River valley, along the Towpath Trail. That site is proving to be at least as complicated as the Shoreway Tower site. But we may see more progress there now that the Shoreway Tower project has been handed off to the construction team.
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