A tower crane was being erected in place two weeks ago to build a similarly tall Shoreway Tower apartments. This was the view from Edgewater Park. The Shoreway Apartments, at left, were the result of an going redevelopment of a 19th-century industrial district into a mix of uses, The Shoreway Tower is the next step in that redevelopment (NEOtrans). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.
Edgewater crane marks tower’s spot, height
For the first time ever, a tower crane has risen along Cleveland’s lakefront near Edgewater Park on the city’s West Side. It marks the spot and the approximate height of a new, luxury apartment tower that will rise next to it over the next 15 months or so.
The 13-story apartment building is called The Shoreway Tower. It is rising at 1200 W. 76th St. at the western edge of Cleveland’s Gordon Square neighborhood. The tower crane first made its appearance here two weeks ago.
NEOtrans was first to report in April that construction was about to start on the project. From April to November, site preparations were conducted including utility work, site leveling and construction of foundations.
The final approved design for The Shoreway Tower, along with an updating of its historic rehab predecessor The Shoreway Apartments at left, are seen here as viewed from the north (EAO).
But since the construction site is next to a busy railroad atop a bluff, at the end of West 78th Street, none of that construction could easily be seen by the general public. The tower crane is the first visual evidence for many of construction of the new residential high-rise.
Named after the Shoreway boulevard that travels between it and the lakefront park, the tower is a follow-on project to the neighboring Shoreway Apartments, a 45-unit, four-story apartment building repurposed in 2014 from the 1918-built Globe Machine and Stamping Co.
The historic brick building will also be updated with new interiors, mechanicals and more, as part of this high-rise project. The construction work is one reason why the Good Company casual restaurant and bar on The Shoreway’s ground floor will be relocating — and expanding.
Beyond Edgewater Park’s 2017-built beach house is a new sentinel watching over Lake Erie’s waterfront. Erected earlier this month, this new tower crane is building its replacement — a 13-story luxury apartment building called the Shoreway Tower (NEOtrans).
J Roc Development LLC, based in Cleveland’s Tremont neighborhood, is the tower’s developer — as it was the developer of the original Shoreway Apartments more than a decade ago. The general contractor is John G. Johnson Construction, also headquartered in Cleveland.
Combined cost of the new-build Shoreway Tower and renovation work is estimated about $92 million. Based on taxable lease bond issuance legislation approved in July 2024 by the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority board, construction cost for the tower itself was estimated at $85.5 million.
Prior to renovation, The Shoreway apartments was a warehouse for arts and crafts retailer Pat Catan’s, owned by the Catanzarite family. Pat Catan’s was sold to The Michaels Companies for $150 million in 2016 by then-CEO Nick Catanzarite, principal of J-Roc and son of the retailer’s founder Pat Catanzarite.
From the south, the tower crane can sometimes be seen between buildings or, in this case, at the end of West 78th Street where new infill housing is also adding to the Detroit-Shoreway neighborhood’s residential inventory (NEOtrans).
Planned in the tower are 110 apartments, to be offered at market-rate rents. It will be built atop a new, 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. But the best views will be in the 143-foot-tall tower, the tallest along the city’s lakefront from Ohio City west to Lakewood’s Gold Coast.
It is only slightly taller, however, than the to-be-renovated 136-foot-tall Westinghouse building on the other side of the Battery Park neighborhood. That enclave is marked by a tall, brick chimney with “Battery Park” lettering that is illuminated at night.
The Battery Park chimney is also as tall as the tower crane for the new Shoreway apartment tower. Both stand out atop Edgewater Park which is awash in late-autumn colors (NEOtrans).
The chimney is left over from a power house, converted into a restaurant, that fed a surrounding 14-acre Eveready battery plant, since redeveloped with housing. The chimney is nearly as tall as the new apartment tower will be after it tops out by this time next year.
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 immediately west of the Shoreway Tower site. However, the latest development proposed for that area is not a high rise.
In April 2022, NEOtrans broke the story that J Roc was considering the new tower, then proposed as a 10-story residential high-rise atop a two-story parking garage. It’s design was molded by a community-input process over the next two years.
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