The city said the Westinghouse buildings, the 1915 tower in the background and the 1880s foundry in the foreground, are in an unsafe condition and need to repaired soon or the city will do it and bill the property owner (NEOtrans). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.
Violation notices filed by city this week
Last spring, everything looked rosy with the pending $81.5 million redevelopment of the former Westinghouse plant near Edgewater Park into mixed uses.
Located at 1200 W. 58th St. in the Detroit-Shoreway neighborhood, the project was progressing steadily toward the start of phase one. That involved securing the existing structures to be followed by adding 106 workforce apartments to an eight-story, 1915-built tower and adding a new, five-story, mixed-use building.
That team, TW58 Cleveland LLC, got its plans approved by the city and was near to getting its financing together. So it submitted in March a letter of intent to the Building Department to proceed with work. It calculated the fee for a construction permit so it could pay and get started.
In May, the last time NEOtrans reported on this development, team members said they would have an announcement about the project’s progress in “next couple of weeks.”
Then, nothing. The silence that followed in the months since that busy spring was deafening. There were no more filings with the city. No announcements as promised from the development team. Not even rumors.
Finally, earlier this month, there was activity. Just not the positive kind. A citizen filed a complaint with the building department on Oct. 16, saying the structures were “collapsing” and that there are “two abandoned buildings with grass that is high. No construction is being done and is not being taken care of.”
An early conceptual rendering showing a renovated eight-story tower at right and a new-construction Foundry Building behind the old foundry’s surviving façade at left (AODK).
A city inspector investigated more than once and, on Oct. 27, filed a violation notice against the property owner later that day. It noted, among other violations, “This structure is found to be structurally unsafe.”
It alleged that the building’s exterior walls, foundations and parapet needed repairs. The inspector said the foundation was found to have large cracks and a parapet wall was out of “plumb” — the vertical version of level. And the roof was not maintained weather-tight with roofing materials deteriorated, loose or missing.
The violation notice also said the grass and/or weeds on-site exceeded 8 inches in height which constituted a public nuisance. Plus, there was graffiti that needed to be removed or covered, and that any debris on-site should be removed.
Those conditions needed to be addressed within 14 days, the notice said. The structural repairs needed to be done within 30 days, although the city often grants extra time if the owner can show that remediation work will begin soon or other progress is being made.
If the city has to make the repairs to address the alleged nuisance and safety violations, the city would undertake the repairs itself and bill the property owner for them. Those costs if unpaid would become a lien placed by the Cuyahoga County Auditor’s office on that property.
The remaining Westinghouse buildings are seen in the background, surrounded by hundreds of new-build apartments at The Edison at Gordon Square (NEOtrans).
Cost of the initial construction work is $8.16 million, according to a permit that is ready and waiting to be picked up from the city by the project’s general contractor Krill
NEOtrans reached out to Michael Trebilcock Jr. and James Rusnov, both principals in the ownership group, for comment and more information. Neither responded prior to publication; this article will be updated if either person replies.
Ward 7 Councilman Austin Davis also was contacted for comment and any additional information from the city’s perspective but he also has yet to respond.
The Westinghouse Tower & Foundry Phase One actually breaks down into phases 1A and 1B. Phase 1A is what might be needed to address the city’s violation notice.
High weeds and grasses at the Westinghouse site, plus the decaying buildings left unimproved since interior demolition and remediation was done three years ago, are next door to hundreds of residents in the Gordon Square neighborhood (NEOtrans).
That involves repairing its masonry and roof, installing windows and doors, and white-boxing the interior to secure the structure. Cost is $8.16 million, according to a permit that has been ready and waiting to be picked up from the city by Cleveland-based general contractor Krill Construction since March.
Phase 1B would add the workforce apartments to the 113,000-square-foot tower that overlooks the West Shoreway. And it would stabilize a neighboring 19th-century Foundry façade while adding a new, five-story mixed-use Foundry Building with 30 housing units on the upper floors and commercial spaces on the first two floors.
Below and behind the new Foundry Building would be two levels of parking, including a parking level below ground at the south end of the sloping, rising land.
A second phase, reportedly a new multi-family building, is envisioned to the west of the tower and parking on the remaining portion of 3.6-acre former Westinghouse Electric campus.
The former Westinghouse complex as it looked today along the north end of West 58th Street (NEOtrans).
At its peak prior to the 1970s when closures and layoffs began, the campus measured 14 acres. The plant, later sold to a new business that made car seat frames, has been vacant since 2019.
The tower saw substantial interior demolition work and remediation of pollutants in 2023 by Krill using a $2.6 million Ohio Brownfield Remediation Program grant. AODK Inc. of Lakewood is the project’s architect.
A big piece of financing was approved in March by Cleveland City Council when it authorized a 30-year tax-increment financing agreement with property-owner Westinghouse-Breakwater Properties, LLC, or its development partnership, TW58 Cleveland.
That followed last fall’s action by the Port of Cleveland in which its board approved $25 million in taxable lease revenue bonds to support $56.1 million worth of early improvements to the Westinghouse site.
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