The planned Cleveland Clinic Peak Performance Center is a development project along the Cuyahoga River in Downtown Cleveland. It is being pursued by Rock Ventures and its real estate arm Bedrock. Although construction is set to start in mid-October, site preparation has actually been underway for nearly a year (Populous). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.
Final design approval by city expected
ARTICLE UPDATED OCT. 4, 2024
Final approval is expected tomorrow by the City Planning Commission of designs for the proposed Cleveland Clinic Global Peak Performance Center featuring the Cleveland Cavaliers’ new practice facility and the Clinic’s sports health/wellness programs. But how do we know approval is expected (UPDATE: it was approved)? Because the groundbreaking ceremony for the new center has been set for the week after next.
A permit was awarded by the city today for a temporary covered “Stage for (the) Cavs’ practice facility ground-breaking,” with the stage placement scheduled from Oct. 8-15. Cost of the large stage with a roof is $60,000. Submitting the application was Hughie’s Event Production which has offices in Cleveland and Pittsburgh.
Although the permit or its application don’t specify when the event will be held, usually the final permitted date of a temporary tent for such ceremonies is the tear-down date. That would mean the groundbreaking would be held on Monday, Oct. 14 with a possible contingency date of Oct. 15. NEOtrans has received confirmed from Cleveland Clinic that the groundbreaking will be held Oct. 14.
Site of the Cleveland Clinic Global Peak Performance Center will at the intersection of West 3rd Street and Eagle Avenue. The latter street will once again ramp up to Ontario Street as it did until about 20 years when its elevated ramp was deemed unsafe and demolished. The new Eagle will run below the new facility (Populous).
Hughie’s does lots of work with Rock Ventures, the Detroit-based parent company of the Global Peak Performance Center’s developer Bedrock. Rock Ventures is also the parent of the Cavaliers basketball team and the Cleveland Monsters hockey team. Billionaire Dan Gilbert owns Rock Ventures.
The location for the event will be at 300 Canal Road — a riverside parking lot below Tower City Center. The actual site of where the Global Peak Performance Center will rise is on the other side of a hairpin turn in the Cuyahoga River called Collision Bend. The structure will be built where West 3rd Street intersects with Eagle Avenue/Stones Levee Road.
NEOtrans was first to report on the proposed project and that the Cavs practice facilities and corporate offices would be returning to Downtown Cleveland after spending the the last 17 years in suburban Independence. But the new center will be more than just a facility for the professional basketball team.
This view from the Lorain-Carnegie Hope Memorial Bridge is going to look very different in a few years. Not only is the new Cleveland Clinic Global Peak Performance Center going to occupy the bottom-center of this scene, but the Eagle Avenue lift bridge at left will be gone and the truss bridge over the former CSX railroad will be replaced with an earthen fill and intersection to the new Canal Road realigned next to the Cuyahoga River (KJP).
The Cleveland Clinic Global Peak Performance Center will offer comprehensive care for the general public, including athletes of all sports and levels, with access to testing and high-tech training equipment and devices, along with expert professionals from a variety of specialties, including orthopedic surgery, sports medicine, cardiology, pulmonology, exercise physiology, neurology, nutrition, psychology and genetics.
Tomorrow, planning commission members will receive a presentation on the final designs for the new 210,000-square-foot global center. Earlier versions shown in the conceptual and schematic stages were approved and have stayed relatively consistent through each, more detailed design step.
Kansas City-based architectural firm Populous said their design was inspired by three principles: embrace the river, create a local icon and elevate the athlete’s experience. In short, the facility looks like a massive lake freighter, the type that routinely plies the curvy Cuyahoga.
Looking northward toward Downtown Cleveland from West 3rd Street, the extensive use of glass makes the new Cavs/Clinic facility look like a heavily windowed lake freighter alongside the Cuyahoga River (Populous).
The final plans show some minor adjustments including the addition of material features on the façades to give it more texture rather than smooth sides of earlier versions. That texture is also intended to interact with nighttime lighting, although the lighting plan will be part of a later submission to the city.
But site preparation work has been taking place alongside the river for nearly a year. Work includes nearly $10 million worth of new riverside steel bulkheads around the outer part Collision Bend. The 340 linear feet of bulkheads have tie rods and anchors that extend 45 feet away from the river bank to support the shoreline and the buildings behind. A pump station is also being relocated.
In late August, construction documents were submitted to the city and a permit application still pending for $7.13 million worth of footings and foundation work at the 74,722-square-foot site. It includes pilings for the Global Peak Performance Center have to be driven about 60 feet down into the earth next to the Cuyahoga River. That’s deeper than the four-story building is tall.
Looking downstream on the Cuyahoga River, with the Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse behind it, the new Global Peak Performance Center will illuminate the Flats South district. The arrow on the inset map at the upper left shows the direction of this view (Populous).
The general contractor for building the center is The Whiting-Turner Contracting Company of Cleveland. Bedrock’s project-specific affiliate Aquila Developer LLC will oversee the development. Because of the extensive foundation work, it may be a while before any of the vertical structure appears. Construction is due to last into 2027.
By then, the immediate area is likely to look very different than it does now. Soon, the long-closed Eagle Avenue lift bridge over the river will be demolished. So will the Stones Levee Road truss bridge over the former CSX railroad right of way which was abandoned for the riverfront development.
Stones Levee will be replaced by a newly built Eagle Avenue ramp, partially built on earthen fill and partially on a bridge over old Canal Road and the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority tracks. The ramp will restore direct vehicular, pedestrian and bike access between downtown and the Flats South area.
Looking up the restored Eagle Avenue ramp from West 3rd Street, one can see how new the Global Peak Performance Center will be built over Eagle. The restored roadway’s ramp will directly connect the center and Flats South to Downtown Cleveland and to Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse where the Cleveland Cavaliers play their home basketball games (Populous).
Canal Road will also be relocated north of Eagle, to be realigned to run right next to the river. Old Canal north of Eagle will become a service and parking-access road for the future phases of Bedrock’s $3.5 billion riverfront development. The Global Peak Performance Center represents the first phase of that development that will extend for about a half-mile downriver, below Tower City Center.
Planned is more than 12 acres of public spaces along the Cuyahoga River, 2,000 new housing units, and more than one million square feet of office space, retail and entertainment. Ironically, the next phase is planned in the same location where the first-phase groundbreaking will be held. The temporary tent and stage might be left there for the next groundbreaking — except it could be at least a couple of years before that happens.
The reason is that streets, bridges, public spaces and other infrastructure associated with the next phase and the overall riverfront development will be substantially funded by a new $1 billion tax-increment financing (TIF) district approved by City Council in August. Funding for the TIF won’t start coming in until the first phase opens and starts generating tax revenue.
Looking downhill into the Flats along Eagle Avenue from the intersection of a new Canal Road (to the right), this nighttime view is what will likely catch the attention of people driving, riding or walking along Ontario Street in Downtown Cleveland (Populous).
However since Bedrock will be responsible for raising $75 million from public and private sources to cover the infrastructure work. So some funding to prepare for the next phase could start coming in earlier with some site prep work for the next phase possibly starting sooner than 2027. The new Canal would have to be open by then to access the site, however.
The reason is that the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority (GCRTA) will rebuild a decayed bridge for its rapid transit tracks over old Canal. GCRTA says this construction project could cost about $5.8 million for which federal funding is available but not until 2027. There is no timeline yet for its reconstruction. Old Canal will likely be closed to traffic during this work.
Another feature to be changed to accommodate the development of the next phase is to dismantle and then build a newly redesigned GCRTA Walkway to Gateway from Tower City Center. This enclosed walkway was built by GCRTA 30 years ago to connect its rapid transit station with the then-new sports arena and baseball park of Gateway. But it is in the way of Bedrock’s next phase of the riverfront.
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