Seeds & Sprouts XVI – City Club tower gets start date & more

This is the Sixteenth edition of Seeds & Sprouts – Early intelligence on Cleveland-area real estate projects. Because these projects are very early in their process of development or just a long-range plan, a lot can and probably will change their final shape, use and outcome.

City Club Apartments tower, 720 Euclid Ave., could see a ground-
breaking occur on or about May 1. It is one of two 20+ story
apartment towers due to see construction start this spring in
Cleveland, marking the start of the Roaring 20s (Vocon).
CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM

City Club Apartments may get May 1 go-ahead

According to the construction bidding publication Dodge Reports, general contractor Cleveland Construction Inc. of Mentor has the green light to start construction May 1 on City Club Apartments — downtown Cleveland’s latest residential tower. The 23-story, 300-unit apartment building would rise at 720 Euclid Ave., one of the last downtown parking lots on the city’s main thoroughfare.

City crews worked last month to relocate utilities below Euclid Avenue so that a construction tower crane for the project could be placed next to the sidewalk. But there is one more hurdle to overcome for City Club Apartments of of Farmington, MI.

A source close to the project said the property owner, currently the Goldberg family, has yet to formally notify the development team of a groundbreaking date. The reason is that the property is due to transfer to a new owner, CCA CBD Cleveland, LLC, an affiliate of City Club Apartments.

Goldberg carved out a half-acre plat from its larger 2-acre parcel last November. Goldberg’s original parcel extended from Euclid south to Prospect Avenue and includes a six-level, 540-space parking garage in the middle of the property.

“The effect of the plat is to consolidate the 10 historical parcels and to split the approximately one-half acre parcel fronting on Euclid Avenue for sale to and development by CCA CBD Cleveland, LLC of the City Club Apartments project,” wrote Mara Cushwa, partner and chair of Calfee, Halter & Griswold LLP’s Real Estate practice group, in a Nov. 18, 2020 letter to the Cuyahoga County Fiscal Office Department.

Dodge Reports also said the cost of the construction project is $92.5 million. That’s less than two other recent high-rise apartment developments — The Beacon, a $95 million 19-story addition to the top of a 9-story parking garage and The Lumen, a $135 million 34-story apartment tower with a 540-space parking garage.

The City Club Apartments will cost less because its height will be only 240 feet, averaging about a foot shorter per floor than either the Beacon or Lumen towers built in 2018 and 2019, respectively. Like The Beacon, City Club Apartments’ parking will be availed by a nearby parking garage that is full during the day but underutilized at night.

The 24-story Artisan, shown above as 10600 Chester, is just one of
multiple high-rise buildings that will further cement the University
Circle area as Cleveland’s “second downtown” (MDP).

Artisan apartments tower in UC to start by May

Along with the City Club Apartments, a taller tower in Cleveland’s second downtown is among those planned to kick off the Roaring Twenties of construction projects in The Land. Artisan, 10600 Chester Ave., in University Circle will see a groundbreaking by May according to the Cleveland Business Journal.

When complete, the 298-unit market-rate apartment tower will top out at 24 stories and 250 feet and become the tallest building in University Circle. That nod currently belongs to One University Circle, a 20-story, 234-foot-tall apartment tower built a block away in 2018 at 10730 Euclid Ave.

White Oak Realty Partners of Chicago is joining with Midwest Development Partners of Cleveland and National Real Estate Advisors of Washington DC to deliver the project. It will be first new building in the multi-tower development Circle Square.

City officials had hoped that that the 11-story, 207-unit Library Lofts apartments featuring a new, ground-floor MLK Branch Library would be Circle Square’s first new building. But bureaucratic and pandemic-related delays by the Cleveland Public Library and Midwest Development Partners pushed Library Lofts’ start date to late-Spring, CBJ reported.

Artisan will have 287 parking spaces over 14,005 square feet of ground-floor retail. Another 24,600 square feet of ground-floor retail will be below two other parking structures offering 488 more parking spaces. In total, there will be 775 spaces among all parking structures in the first phase. The first phase represents a $186 million investment, city documents show.

Floor plans and other documents were submitted to the city last week
for the conversion of the second floor of the New England Building,
629 Euclid Ave., from offices to apartments and a fitness center. The
plans were part of a request for a zoning review and building permit
application by an affiliate of MRN Ltd. (SA Group).

One floor of downtown office building to get apartments

A new building permit application to the city offers an indication of the health of two different downtown Cleveland markets — office and residential. Jori Maron of Cleveland-based MRN Ltd., doing business as 629 Euclid Ltd., is seeking to convert vacant office spaces on the second floor of the historic New England Building into 11 market-rate apartments and a fitness center for building tenants.

The projected $1,275,000 renovation cost would convert the unused, 13,740-square-foot floor. Plans show the fitness center would measure 2,945 square feet and the apartments would average about 1,000 square feet each. The rest of the 17-story building is used for a Holiday Inn Express hotel and an office building including tenants like digital marketer Rosetta Inc. and real estate firm Stark Enterprises.

Maron did not respond prior to publication of this article seeking more information about the project, including if additional vacant office floors may be converted to residential or about the general health of the office market vs. residential market.

There is a lot going on in this block of Euclid Avenue. As noted at the top of this Seeds & Sprouts column, the City Club Apartments tower is due to see construction soon. And, last week, iHeart Media Cleveland announced it would move its offices, studios and about 100 employees later this year from suburban Independence to the ground floor of 668 Euclid Ave., across the street from the New England Building.

Plans for Green Opal Salon’s new space in the Church+State
development in the 2800 block of Detroit Avenue in Ohio City
were submitted to the city of Cleveland for review (HD+S).

Ground-floor tenants making moves in Ohio City, downtown

Two small businesses, Green Opal Salon and Anna In The Raw, will be relocating in the coming months, according to filings submitted recently to the Cleveland Building Department.

Green Opal Salon will relocate to a 1,693-square-foot storefront in the new Church+State development, 1436 Church and State Way. The new location for the salon represents an investment of $300,000, a building permit application shows.

There, it will join with Great Lakes Health & Wellness which revealed to NEOtrans in December that it will expand to the two-building development in Ohio City’s Hingetown section. Green Opal Salon has hired Hiti, DiFrancesco and Siebold, Inc. as its project architect.

Since it began in 2017, Green Opal Salon has been in business at 11627 Clifton Blvd. in Cleveland’s Edgewater neighborhood. It is located between Eddy’s Barbershop and Starbucks. Owner Renee Dreshaj did not return a phone call seeking more information.

Health food and juice cafe Anna In The Raw will relocate from the
IMG Building at left to the AECOM Building at right. This view
looks west on St. Clair Avenue from East 9th Street (Google).

Anna In The Raw, now located in the IMG Building lobby, 1360 E. 9th St., will relocate across St. Clair Avenue to the westernmost space in the AECOM Building’s lobby, 1300 E. 9th., in downtown Cleveland.

With the designs of HSB Architects, Anna Harouvis plans to invest $160,000 to develop a 992-square-foot space for her new raw foods and healthy juices establishment. She was at her old location in the IMG Building since 2001. Harouvis opened her first cafe Mardi Gras Deli in downtown Cleveland in 1995, according to her Web site.

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