This warehouse on Mulberry Avenue on the West Bank of the Flats is planned to be the new home of a growing clothing manufacturer called Found Surface. But the owner of the building is concerned that the city will delay this project as it had delayed a previous one to death. The property is next to the Centennial Lake Link Trail (Google). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.
Timely city action will keep jobs in Cleveland
ARTICLE UPDATED OCT. 17
A boarded-up warehouse along the thread of the Centennial Lake Link Trail on Cleveland’s Flats West Bank could soon sew up a growing clothing manufacturer. But the lease signed this week by Cleveland-based Found Surface has an escape clause that allows it to cut and run to its second-choice location in the suburbs.
Terry Coyne, owner of the warehouse property at 2424 Mulberry Ave., announced on social media the signing of Found Surface as its tenant. Coyne is better known as executive vice chairman of real estate brokerage Newmark Ohio. He owns the property through Coyne Mulberry LLC.
He confirmed in a follow-up phone call that plans for renovating the warehouse were submitted Oct. 13 to the city’s Building Department. Millstone Management Group of Chesterland and DSC Architects of Berea submitted the plans to make $150,000 worth of renovations to the building’s interior.
It’s not often that we hear of a growing American-based clothing manufacturer, let alone one in Cleveland since Hugo Boss, Joseph & Feiss, Richman Brothers and others faded from the local garment scene. Most domestic manufacturers were unable to beat cheap, foreign clothiers at their game.
But CEO Aidan Meany, a Cleveland-based designer who launched the sustainable fashion company, is doing just that by sourcing materials from organic cotton and recycled plastic bottles. He founded the company five years ago at the age of 21.
Floor plans for the new location of Found Surface clothing company on the West Bank of Cleveland’s Flats (DSC).
The company had its first offices in the Artcraft Building. Decades ago, that stretch of Superior Avenue just east of downtown was Cleveland’s garment district, back when Cleveland ranked second behind New York City in clothing manufacturing. Before that, textile manufacturing was located in the Warehouse District and Flats.
To make way for the new Cleveland Division of Police headquarters and to expand production, Found Surface moved to the former location of Inca Tea, 6513 Union Ave., in Cleveland’s Slavic Village.
The company now has 12 employees but renovation plans show the new site will have the capacity for many more workers. The new facility will have a production floor with up to 48 sewing machine tables, three production queues, two knitting machines cutting tables, five desks in a development suite and a second-floor with four offices.
“Somehow this small company, led by Aidan Meany, has figured out a way to compete with less expensive competitors from abroad,” Coyne wrote on LinkedIn. “They are Cleveland born and bred and growing.”
“I am excited to help them with their growth,” he continued. “Manufacturing jobs are valuable. And new manufacturing jobs in the city of Cleveland in old-line business such as clothing are even more rare.”
In 2023, Forbes selected Found Surface founder Aidan Meany, second from the left, for its inaugural 30 Under 30 Local: Cleveland list — highlighting young innovators who are shaping the future of their industries, and their cities, from the ground up (Found Surface).
Coyne Mulberry LLC acquired the 0.38-acre property from Saw Service & Supply in 2021 for $375,000, according to Cuyahoga County property records. It contains two structures totaling about 18,000 square feet constructed in 1953 and 1965.
Unfortunately, Found Surface isn’t Coyne’s first try at stitching a new tenant into this warehouse. He bought the property because of the adjacent Centennial Lake Link Trail project was nearing completion.
So he tried to develop the site as a pickle ball center. Two doors down, another investor opened Mulberry’s, a sports/pizza bar offering indoor and outdoor volleyball courts. But Coyne had to let the pickle ball tenant out of its lease since the permitting was still unresolved after four years.
“If this building was not located in an Opportunity Zone, I would lose a great deal of money,” he said. “I hope the city of Cleveland Building Department cares about the city of Cleveland and issues me permits in a reasonably timely fashion. Good jobs are at stake.”
UPDATE: “I would like to thank (Cleveland’s Chief Building Official) Tom Vanover and his department for the speed with which they processed our permit drawings,” Coyne added on Oct. 17. “Submitted Tuesday. Returned (as approved) Thursday. Amazing.”
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