The new Sherwin-Williams headquarters tower at right will not be taking company employees who are located on three floors of the 10-story Higbee Building at far left. Instead, Sherwin-Williams is investing a modest amount to improve amenity spaces in common areas of the Higbee Building (NEOtrans). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.
Higbee won’t be a long-term solution
Yesterday, on the same day Sherwin-Williams (SHW) was touting in a press release the move-in dates for its 1.6 million square feet of new research and headquarters facilities, it was also delivering plans to the city of Cleveland for renovations to three floors of downtown’s Higbee Building.
Both actions offered messages about the global coatings giant’s real estate presence in Northeast Ohio and especially in Downtown Cleveland. Although the message from their plans for the 10-story Higbee Building, 100 Public Square, are not as clear. Only time will reveal it.
“We are excited to announce that the multi-phase moves to the new Morikis Global Technology Center (MGTC) in Brecksville began on Sept. 22 and the multi-phase moves to our new global headquarters (HQ) in Downtown Cleveland begin Oct. 31,” wrote Julie Young, SHW’s vice president of global corporate communications in an e-mail to Cleveland media yesterday.
She said the move to MGTC is expected to be completed by mid-December. The move to the new HQ is expected to be completed by the end of first quarter of 2026. NEOtrans has learned from employees that there is a pilot group already working in the new HQ building.
“These world-class facilities support our culture of winning together while serving the needs of our customers,” Young added. “Our employees have so much to look forward to including modern, attractive workspaces to fuel collaboration and innovation, and other world-class amenities, such as fitness and wellness centers to support employee health and wellbeing.”
Amenity spaces in common areas of the three floors that Sherwin-Williams leases in the Higbee Building will be improved and updated. But that may not mean that Sherwin-Williams is settling in for a long stay (LoopNet).
Combined, the sites offer more than 1.6 million square feet and will house approximately 4,000 employees. Young said the company is honored to have an opportunity to further impact the Cleveland and Northeast Ohio communities.
“We are proud to invest in our future and the future of the region, which has been our home since 1866,” she continued.
But the fact that a growing SHW had expanded into office spaces for nearly 500 workers at the former department store two years ago was a strong message. That message was that its new 1.1-million-square-foot HQ campus topped by a 616-foot-tall skyscraper on the northwest corner of Public Square was apparently insufficient for its needs. It’s no wonder SHW didn’t announce its Higbee expansion.
Another message conveying that the HQ wasn’t big enough was the company’s decision to continue its 152,000-square-foot flex office space at 4780 Hinckley Industrial Parkway in Cleveland. That space opened in 2017 after SHW acquired Valspar. There are no plans to close it.
SHW’s old HQ is in the 900,000-square-foot Landmark Building, 101 W. Prospect Ave. which was sold to Bedrock Real Estate two years ago and has leased space for HQ offices in the neighboring Skylight Office Tower. Bedrock wants to repurpose the Landmark with residential above commercial uses or convert to a new Cuyahoga County Justice Center.
While offices on the upper floors of the Higbee Building help keep downtown streets active during the day, the JACK Cleveland Casino on the first two floors contributes to a vibrant nightlife (NEOtrans).
Across Prospect, SHW leases 212,742 square feet of space in the Higbee Building. It occupies the entire 77,322-square-foot sixth floor, the 67,713-square-foot eighth floor and the 67,707-square-foot ninth floor.
There, it plans to spend $500,000 to renovate about 12,000 square feet of common area amenity spaces, or about 4,000 square feet on each floor, according to a construction permit filed yesterday by Cleveland-based architect Vocon Partners with the Cleveland Building Department.
“This renovation includes demolition and construction on walls, doors and millwork,” wrote Vocon Interior Designer Bethany Saltzman. “Scope of work includes modifications to electrical, plumbing and mechanical.”
But $500,000 isn’t a significant commitment for a global corporation that earned $23 billion last year. So it doesn’t mean that SHW is settling in for a long stay at the Higbee Building. SHW media relations staff didn’t respond to NEOtrans’ request for more information.
Nor is it measurably at cross-purposes with SHW’s decision last month to temporarily suspend the company’s matching contributions to employee 401(k) plans, blaming weak sales from a slowing economy and federal tariffs. SHW also instituted a hiring freeze.
The old Sherwin-Williams HQ is at center in this eastward-looking view on Prospect Avenue amid Tower City Center. The Higbee Building is at far left (Google).
VICI Properties of New York City has owned the 1931-built, 815,000-square-foot Higbee Building since 2020, acquiring it from an affiliate of Bedrock Real Estate, one of billionaire Dan Gilbert’s Detroit-based Rock family of companies.
The Higbee Building, part of the Tower City Center complex, held the Higbee’s (later Dillards) department store until 2002. It is best known over the past 15 years days as the home of the JACK Cleveland Casino. It has a lease until 2040 of about 96,000 square feet on the first and second floors.
Rocket Mortgage, another firm under Gilbert’s Rock Ventures’ umbrella, leases about 200,000 square feet on the third, fourth and fifth floors at Higbee until the end of 2026. Its office presence was fast-growing until a few years ago, igniting rumors that it would soon relocate into a new office building to be built and owned by Bedrock.
At that time, real estate insiders said its offices would be part of phase 1B of its massive Riverfront Cleveland development which had a big, proposed office component. Now that phase is dominated by a planned 17-story Rock and Roll Land hotel and theater at the southwest corner of Huron Road and Ontario Street.
Instead, a new office building is being considered for the northeast corner of Huron and Ontario, between Tower City Center, The Riverfront Cleveland and Bedrock’s planned Rock Block megaproject.
A second phase of Sherwin-Williams headquarters, dubbed HQ2, is shown outlined in red in this official model. But any decision on building HQ2 will probably not be made until after all company employees settle into their new offices by next spring (TV20).
Real estate sources say Bedrock is seeking to attract a data center for the upper floors of the Higbee Building. Its high ceilings, thick concrete floors and access to electrical power make it well-suited for a data center, they said. Bedrock Vice President of Communications Lora Brand didn’t respond to a NEOtrans inquiry about this prior to publication of this article.
If a data center and not offices are in the Higbee Building’s future, both Rocket Mortgage and SHW may not be staying there for much longer. While Bedrock has projects visibly in the works to accommodate Rocket Mortgage, SHW doesn’t for its offices that have fallen out of the nest for lack of space.
There recently were strong rumors that SHW was planning for a second headquarters tower, something that SHW acknowledged early on in its HQ planning process. The HQ2 rumor mill stopped churning a year ago based on reports that SHW executives wanted to first see how employees fit into their respective spaces in MGTC and HQ.
And now that we have the timetables for those move-ins, we may also have the timetable for when SHW executives can evaluate the company’s research/office space needs going forward.
Therefore, even if SHW decides it needs more space, it will be at least another year or two before executives decide how to address it. That’s part of the explanation of why modest improvements are sought now for SHW employees at the Higbee Building.
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