Shaded in red, the 35-acre Morabito site between Interstate 77 at left and East 55th Street at right in Cleveland’s Slavic Village is proposed to host a hyperscale data center (Google). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.
150-MW hyperscale facility to be city’s first
Set between Cleveland’s Slavic Village and the industrial valley in the coming years could be the city’s largest-ever data center. While at this early stage, it has generated many questions, its backers say the large site and nearby presence of industrial-scale electrical power and water resources should answer many of those questions.
Proposed is a $1.6-billion, 150-megawatt data center campus comprised of three buildings set on 35 acres currently owned by Morabito Enterprises, a longtime trucking firm with an address of 3560 E. 55th St. Morabito has been trying to sell its property off-market in recent years.
Seeking the data center campus is Lakeland Equity Group led by Managing Director Sam Khouri whose family has been involved in many aspects of real estate in Greater Cleveland and beyond. Other partners also have strong real estate and financial backgrounds but not specifically when it comes to data centers.
Their real estate and financial backgrounds will certainly be necessary to pull off a project of this scale, complexity and, frankly, controversy. Khouri did not respond to an e-mail seeking more information prior to publication of this article.
This article will be updated and/or followed up with his and other updates. This is a major, developing story.
When Commerce Park 77 was proposed for the Morabito site nearly five years ago, it was planned with two light industrial buildings in different configurations. But because light-industrials require more permanent jobs than data centers, much of the site needed significant parking while a data center campus does not (JLL).
The trio of two-story buildings are projected to measure a total of 300,000 square feet and have a estimated development price tag of $1.6 billion — making it one of the most expensive private-sector real estate developments in Greater Cleveland history.
“We propose a premier 150-MW data center campus on a 35-acre site in Cleveland, designed to be the city’s first state-of-the-art hyperscale facility,” Khoury said in a permit application submitted yesterday to the city’s Building Department.
“The project will deliver secure, resilient digital infrastructure with advanced power, cooling, and fiber connectivity, supporting cloud, AI, and enterprise workloads while creating significant local investment and long-term technical jobs,” Khoury continued.
A 150 MW facility sits in the high-end of hyperscale, which is designed for high-density AI and cloud computing, consuming power equivalent to a small city. Some estimates say such a facility’s power demands could equate to roughly more than 100,000 homes.
A trio of two-story windowless structures averaging about 100,000 square feet similar to these could be built in Cleveland’s Slavic Village neighborhood to accommodate large data center (ULI).
This proposed data center would be banned under a proposed Ohio Prohibition of Data Center Construction Amendment that may appear on the ballot in Ohio as an initiated constitutional amendment this November.
The ballot initiative would prohibit the construction of data centers that are used for digital data processing with an aggregate power demand exceeding 25 megawatts. But time is running out on the gathering of enough petition signatures to put the question on the ballot in just five months.
Similarly sized facilities, such as one proposed in the west-suburban Baltimore community of Woodlawn, are also facing public opposition. These facilities typically occupy more than 40 acres of land and require dedicated utility substations to operate. As with Baltimore’s project, no end-user has yet been identified for Cleveland’s.
Here, Lakeland Equity Group’s $1.6 billion project costs includes $1 billion for construction and the rest for site preparation, infrastructure and other utilities, plus other indirect costs to accommodate data center.
Across Interstate 77 from the Steel Warehouse is this entrance to the Morabito site off East 49th Street (Google).
An electrical power line runs along the north side of the site, next to the Morgana Run creek and trail. But it is not a cross-country, high-tension power line. The trail was built on the former right of way of Wheeling & Lake Erie Railroad.
Water to cool servers at the data center could from nearby watersheds or from a North East Ohio Regional Sewer District stormwater overflow tunnel under construction at the northwest corner of the Morabito property, next to East 49th Street. There will also need to be generators provided on-site for back-up power in the event of outages.
The Morabito site has been proposed for redevelopment before. The last time it was publicly noted was in the fall of 2021. Then it was proposed as a campus of warehouses and/or light-industries called Commerce Park 77, so-named because it is within sight of Interstate 77.
In that concept, the site was to host two buildings configured in different ways to provide anywhere from 400,000 to 500,000 square feet of space. There are also numerous nearby parcels owned by city and county land banks.
The Morabito site has actually grown larger since this diagram was released one year ago as part of a property sale offering. In December of 2025, the former Mound School property on its namesake street at East 55th was deeded to Morabito Enterprises (Morabito).
Morabito’s collection of properties grew larger in December 2025 when the 1.27-acre former Mound School property at Mound and East 55th streets was deeded to Morabito Enterprises by the Cleveland Metropolitan School District.
The Morabito brothers, Anthony and Benjamin, purchased their first property off East 55th from Hunkin Conkey Construction Co. in 1973 and continued adding land over the next few decades, said Ben Morabito.
The brothers operated and serviced a fleet of nearly 100 trucks from that site. But Anthony Morabito passed away at the age of 84 in February 2025, leading his brother to walk away from the business and sell the property.
After a significant clean up of the property, the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency inspected the area and made a finding of no further action (NFA) needed. The NFA related to corrective actions involving hydrocarbons and fuel contamination at a vehicle fueling station on the site.
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