The Row on Garden is the two identical-looking buildings at left along Garden Avenue. They are intended as a step-down in scale from the larger buildings along Pearl Road at right which are part of the same development by ALMiCO Group (Brandt). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.
Landmarks finally gives nod to project
It’s been more than two years of back and forth with the city, but a proposed residential development in Cleveland’s Brooklyn Centre neighborhood finally got approved today by the Cleveland Landmarks Commission.
Row on Garden, an 18-unit apartment project designed to look like traditional townhomes from the outside, won unanimous support from Landmarks to move the project forward. It is planned on the north side of Garden Avenue, just west of Pearl Road.
It is the fourth component for a larger development across both sides of Garden. Because it is located in the Brooklyn Centre Historic District, that gave the commission jurisdiction. But approval of the two new buildings, each three stories tall, came with several conditions.
The commission urged the project’s architect, Brandt Architecture of Rocky River, to review with Landmarks Commission staff the possibility of having deeper porches, better disability access, and the use of windows and exterior colors that are more compatible with those of historic homes nearby.
Site plan for the Row on Garden at left in darker red, showing how it relates to the rest of the ALMiCO Group’s development at Garden Avenue and Pearl Road (Brandt).
Landmarks also went on the record as endorsing all zoning and building code variances required for the project to move forward. But Landmarks cannot approve the variances. Instead, the variances, affecting parking, density, landscaping and screening, will be sought at an upcoming meeting of the Board of Zoning Appeals.
The four pieces of the overall development will total 91 apartments plus 4,950 square feet of offices and a like amount of retail space. If the development site was not on a major transit corridor, it would require 142 parking spaces. Since it is located in a transit-oriented development district, the site qualifies for a 50 percent reduction in its parking requirement.
But the development plan offers even less parking — 57 spaces. The project can do that by employing transportation demand management (TDM) strategies like offering tenants transit passes, central bike parking and other features that can reduce its parking to as few as zero spaces if its TDM strategy allows.
When the Row on Garden was first proposed in 2023 by the Lakewood-based developer ALMiCO Group, it was envisioned as a six-unit townhome development to replace four decaying, historic homes bought by the developer.
The back or north side of the Row on Garden show that all units will have balconies, overlooking a 57-space parking lot for it and the other three pieces of the overall development which totals 91 apartments, plus several offices and retail spaces (Brandt).
Several designs changes followed including separating the new Row on Garden buildings with a driveway or combining them as a single building. The approved design has two identical, nine-unit buildings separated by a narrow passage.
“So much time has passed that it’s essentially a different project from when it started,” said Daniel Musson, secretary of the Cleveland Landmarks Commission.
It took lots of effort to get Landmarks’ support to demolish the homes, including Landmarks accusing ALMiCO of demolition by neglect of the oldest house which dated to the 19th century. But the development team said that every time it boarded up the vacant homes, vagrants would force their way back in.
The overall development started in 2022 with the renovation and repurposing of the Brooklyn Masonic Temple, 3804 Pearl, into the Lofts on Pearl into a 26-unit apartment complex with ground-floor commercial spaces. The Lofts on Pearl has since leased out, said Kostas Almiroudis, principal of ALMiCO.
A street-level view of the proposed Row on Garden development, looking at it with a westward view along Garden Avenue. The Landmarks Commission urged more recessed porches, lighter colors on the exterior of stairwells and landscape screening (Brandt).
On the other side of Garden from the Lofts on Pearl is the 1890-built Kerns Hall, 2604 Garden, for which ALMiCO won $596,903 in state historic tax credits to renovate. It’s a three-story mixed-use building that will be repurposed for $20.7 million with local retail, a restaurant and community spaces.
And just north of that will be the Flats on Pearl, a new-construction, five-story building with 34 apartments above three ground-floor retail spaces at 3784 Pearl. A single-level commercial building was demolished for it and construction could start this fall, Almiroudis said.
Row on Garden is the fourth component, intended as a transition piece between the larger buildings on Pearl and the neighborhood to the west, said Jill Brandt, principal at Brandt Architecture..
“We’re looking at this piece as sort of a stepping down in the scale from the commercial buildings on Pearl Road — stepping down to the residential scale to the existing homes further down on Garden Avenue,” she said.
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