Reese Consumer Health has signed on as the anchor tenant for the Gateway 55 light-industrial development on East 55th Street in Cleveland’s Slavic Village (Bowen). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.
Reese Consumer Health to stay in Cleveland
Reese Consumer Health, a 120-year-old family-owned, Cleveland-based company that planned to consolidate and expand its facilities earlier this year at a new structure on Woodland Avenue, will instead land at another location.
But its current site near University Circle, the Woodland site, and now the new site all have something in common — they’re within a stone’s-throw of the Opportunity Corridor Boulevard on the city’s East Side.
According to plans submitted to the city, Reese Consumer Health will take roughly 69,000 square feet of space at the planned, 166,000-square-foot Gateway 55 light-industrial development, 3000 E. 55th St., at the north end of Cleveland’s Slavic Village.
“Gateway 55 is a new industrial development by Premier Development Partners that reactivates a long-underutilized industrial site on Cleveland’s East Side,” noted a presentation prepared by Richard L. Bowen & Associates for Friday’s Design Review Committee meeting at the City Planning Commission.
Gateway 55 is up for approval of its schematic plan by the committee. Independence-based Premier Development Partners has developed numerous light-industrial, warehousing, manufacturing office and mixed-use facilities. Bowen, based in Cleveland, has an even wider roster of clients and their designed uses on its resume.
Site plan for the proposed Gateway 55 warehouse, including offices and production facilities. North is at the top of the graphic (Bowen).
“Reese Consumer Health will serve as the anchor tenant, supporting office, production, warehousing, and distribution operations,” the presentation continues. “Historically occupied by manufacturing, railroad-support, scrap-metal, binding, and tire-related uses, the assembled site has been cleared, remediated, and prepared for renewed industrial activity.”
The site, which will include a 132-space parking lot, is surrounded by industry and railroads and is on the Opportunity Corridor, one exit east of Interstate 77 and 490. And it’s a 1,000-foot walk from the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority’s East 55th light-rail station.
Premier acquired properties for Gateway 55 and consolidated them. That included absorbing Sweeney Avenue between East 55th and East 51st street. Sweeney is one of the few streets in Cleveland paved with cobblestones. The plans show Sweeney would likely be removed.
However, several mature trees at the back of the site along East 51st Street would be kept. Decorative trees and a hedgerow are planned at the front of the Gateway 55 building, next to East 55th’s sidewalk.
An aerial rendering of the planned Gateway 55 development with the interchange between East 55th Street and, below it, the Opportunity Corridor Boulevard (Bowen).
NEOtrans broke the story last month that Premier was moving forward with the Gateway 55 development and that it had a tenant but declined to identify it at that time.
And, at the start of this year, NEOtrans first reported that Reese Consumer Health was planning to relocate its offices and some of its production from a site at 10617 Frank Ave. near University Circle. Called Reese Pharmaceutical until last year, the company had been based on Frank since 1937.
Reese since expanded to leased spaces at four addresses at and near 1617 E. 40th St. Reese Consumer Health President Jeff Reese told NEOtrans that the multiple sites created a “wildly inefficient” duplication of process, with wasted movement.
“We’re moving because of our current facility constraints,” Reese said. “Last year we refocused our strategy. And with that strategy, we intend to grow rapidly. We are at maximum capacity. We can’t add new package lines and we’ve turned down business that would have increased revenue 50 percent.”
The Gateway 55 development site is cleared, cleaned and its 15 acres of land assembled. This view is from July from the corner of East 55th Street and the vacated Sweeney Avenue, one of the few cobblestone streets left in Cleveland (Google).
Reese started out as a chemical company, then transitioned into a pharmaceutical company and now takes bulk products from other manufacturers and repackages them for retail sale at CVS, Walgreens, Walmart and grocery stores. The company has also recently started taking on international brand lines.
At the 9.4-acre Woodland site, Reese planned to build a 75,000-square-foot facility, with 16,000 square feet of it allocated to offices and the rest to production. Reese also wanted the ability to expand its facilities by another 50,000 square feet if demand warrants.
But the Woodland site, owned by the city’s Industrial-Commercial Land Bank, proved to be more complicated. It was still in the process of getting cleaned up from its prior use by the Victoreen Instrument Co. that made devices that measured X-ray exposure. The plant was vacated in 1994 and demolished in 2019.
Premier’s President and Founding Member Spencer Pisczak told NEOtrans that Gateway 55’s 15-acre site is already cleaned up and the land assembled, ready for construction. And one or more tenants could expand into the rest of the proposed building, including Reese to accommodate its projected growth.
Reese had previously considered building nearby at the northwest corner of Woodland Avenue and Woodhill Road. But that site was more complicated and not yet development-ready (Bialosky).
Cost of Gateway 55’s site preparation and construction was not available. A placeholder amount of only $2 million was publicly listed amongst other plans and information submitted for the project to the city’s Building Department in August.
The actual cost will likely be in the tens of millions of dollars based on other, similar projects in the region. Among them is the nearby Nor-Am Cold Storage facility, 2797 E. 75th St. Cost of building that 156,000-square-foot frozen food distribution hub in 2024 was $50 million.
Premier touted the land as the only construction-ready site along the Opportunity Corridor. In 2021, the city entered into agreements with Reserve for a 100-percent, 30-year property tax abatement for site improvements and a chain-of-title deal to secure non-school tax-increment financing to help develop the site.
Improvements included demolishing and remediating several active and abandoned structures, including for Tyroler Scrap Metals, Inc., Finish Line Binderies/BindTech and the Black Lion Tire Co.
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