Looking northeast from the intersection of Barber Avenue and West 32nd Place, the Joy Court Townhomes at left and the Old Mill Street Apartments at right would continue the transformation of the BVQ District of Cleveland’s Clark-Fulton neighborhood (Vocon). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.
Project is latest proposed in BVQ District
There’s been lots of new housing units planned lately for the Barber-Vega-Queen (BVQ) District at the north end of Cleveland’s Clark-Fulton neighborhood. But none is as large as the project that just won support from the city’s Near West Design Review Committee.
Sure, the planned 200-unit, Hub 27 development next door would be larger in all of its phases than the Joy Court Townhomes-Old Mill Street Apartments development revealed by an affiliate of Cleveland-based developer Seaton Woods Ventures LLC. But this isn’t Seaton Woods’ only BVQ development either.
On April 23, the Near West Design Review Committee recommended that the citywide design review committee approve the 114-housing-unit development, with some suggestions on new colors and landscape amenities. The project is comprised of the 98-unit Old Mill Street Apartment building and 16 for-sale townhomes in four groups of four townhouses each.
Members of the general public are invited to help influence the project’s preliminary design by attending a design charette at 6 p.m. May 14 in the BVQ Lofts’ community room, 2801 Barber Ave., said Seaton Woods President Ben Beckman.
Conceptual site plan with ground-floor uses in the Joy Court Townhomes, yellow shaded structures at left, and the Old Mill Street Apartments, shaded mostly in blue at right. This basic outline could change pending input from a May 14 design charette and upcoming design review meetings with the city (Vocon).
The charette will be held in partnership with Metro West Community Development Organization. A second design charette is being considered for June, but the date hasn’t been set yet. Nor is there a schedule for when the project might be reviewed by the citywide design review committee.
The 69-unit BVQ Lofts was Seaton Woods first development in this neighborhood, opening in 2019 in the repurposed Julius Spang Bakery. The company is also pursuing the 45-unit Vega Avenue Studio Lofts, 2700 Vega Ave., just south of the BVQ Lofts.
Although the 82,222-square-foot Old Mill Street Apartments will have a three-story frontage along Barber, it will actually be a four-story building with a row of 17 apartments on the top floor. They will be stepped back behind a rooftop solar array, if funding can be secured for it, and a rooftop deck at the corner of Barber and West 30th Street — called Mill Street prior to 1906.
Below the apartment building will be a 38-space parking garage with bike parking, storage and utilities. Since the terrain slopes downward north of the building, the garage ramp from West 30th won’t be steep. Other parking spaces will be on the streets near the new development.
The proposed Old Mill Street Apartments, seen at the acute corner of Barber Avenue and West 30th Street, features a quirky roofline with an asymmetrical gable that is different from the rest of the building that looks like a series of closely spaced houses to break up the mass of the building (Vocon).
“We want the pedestrian’s eye to read the building as a set of closely spaced houses with a small modern apartment building at the corner rather than a single monolithic apartment block,” Beckman explained.
“The entry lobby and apartments above needed a modern twist given the acute angle in the plan where the building is closest to the intersection of West 30th and Barber,” he said. “It is asymmetrical, but I quite like the quirky roofline in that one section. It sets up a useful tension with the lovely symmetrical gable ends further west.”
Located along West 32nd Place will be the Joy Court Townhomes. Eight, smaller townhomes will be two stories tall, offering 1,140 square feet of space in each and no garage but with 11 parking spaces nearby, according to plans submitted to the city.
The other half of the townhomes will be three stories tall with 1,639 gross square footage, including a garage. The total living area for each of the larger townhomes will measure 1,379 square feet, plans show.
Unlike the first photo which shows the eight smaller townhomes, this view shows the eight larger townhomes which include a garage on their ground floors along a new private roadway off West 32nd Place (Vocon).
“We hope that construction and financing costs will allow us to offer the townhomes for sale at prices that will be attainable by households making $65,000 to $90,000 per year with good credit and 20 percent down,” Beckman said.
There is a plot of land comprised of two parcels, totaling just under 0.2 acres that hasn’t been acquired by Seaton Woods’ affiliate Joy Court Fee Owner LLC. Along Barber, it separates the proposed Joy Court townhomes from the Old Mill Street Apartments.
Beckman said he has tried to acquire the land, owned by T & R Builders Inc. of North Royalton, but to no avail. In recent years, he has acquired multiple properties, demolished decayed homes and asked the city to vacate unused street rights of way in the BVQ District.
“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,” Beckman told NEOtrans.
Looking northeast on Barber Avenue, the Old Mill Street Apartments will appear to be three stories tall from the street but will have a fourth floor set back from the front (Vocon).
He said he chose to invest here because of the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority’s (GCRTA) pending $50 million MetroHealth Line bus rapid transit project along 4 miles of West 25th Street.
GCRTA officials said they want to finish design work in 2025 and start construction in 2026 on the bus rapid transit project on West 25th from Detroit Avenue in Ohio City to downtown Old Brooklyn. Construction is due to 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.
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