This massing shows the conceptual scale and placement of buildings on Fairview Hospital’s North Campus. The new cancer center and medical office building is proposed to be built first then the old Moll Cancer Center will be demolished for a parking garage to replace the existing parking garage on Groveland Avenue (CannonDesign). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.
Planning Commission recommends notable changes
Although a conceptual plan for Fairview Hospital’s North Campus $150 million redevelopment won unanimous support from Cleveland Planning Commission on Friday, commissioners attached a few conditions to it. At the same meeting, the commission also recommended that Cleveland City Council approve rezoning the hospital’s properties with a more appropriate classification. The hospital is located at 18101 Lorain Ave. in Cleveland’s Kamms Corners neighborhood.
On the north side of Lorain Avenue, Fairview Hospital’s owner and operator Cleveland Clinic plans to demolish small buildings containing the Breast Center and the Respiratory Institute and replace them with a 169,521-square-foot combined cancer center and medical office building overlooking the Rocky River valley. Once that is built, the Clinic plans to demolish the remaining buildings, namely the Moll Cancer Center, and construct a 995-space parking garage.
The plan was presented in a basic conceptual format, with massings showing only the scale and placement of buildings on the site. After the Clinic’s design team gathers and analyzes input from the city on that concept, it will add details, textures and colors to a potentially revised form.
The North Campus concept that was presented to the Cleveland Planning Commission was the result of five community meetings held since October 2023 at the request of the West Park Kamms Neighborhood Development Corp., a nonprofit community development corporation (CDC).
Despite recent modifications and even reductions to the scale of the planned North Campus, commission members wanted to see more. Specifically, they urged that the Clinic study and provide documentation of lowering the height of the garage by constructing one or two levels below ground. They also wanted to see a study of building a pedestrian tunnel below Lorain, between the garage and the existing hospital, instead of an enclosed pedestrian bridge proposed by the Clinic.
A conceptual site plan for Fairview Hospital’s North Campus, as presented to the Cleveland Planning Commission’s Design-Review Committee (CannonDesign).
Planning Commission Chair Lillian Kuri said she doubted a tunnel here would require more sewer and other infrastructure work than the pedestrian tunnel the Clinic built two decades ago under Euclid Avenue at East 93rd Street at its main campus near University Circle. That tunnel links the Clinic’s 1,600-space P1 Garage and its S and H buildings.
Commission Vice Chair August Fluker said pedestrian bridges don’t promote pedestrian traffic on the street. And as someone who lives near the Clinic’s main campus, he said he had doubts about the Clinic’s ability to promote pedestrian, bike and transit activity in and around its campus to reduce the need for so much parking.
“I’m not convinced the Clinic can pull it off because their lens is always about getting people in their buildings — parking and getting in,” Fluker said. “You can look at this holistically to figure out how people move, how cars move and how buses move.”
Kuri had other recommendations, as well. “I think the garage itself needs to be wrapped at that (southeast) corner,” she added. “You’ve only addressed the face towards the Clinic and not towards the community. To me that’s a non-negotiable.”
Commissioners expressed concern about a surface parking lot on Lorain between West 178th and 179th streets, saying that parking lots don’t promote pedestrianism. If removed and redesigned as a place for people to linger and enjoy, it would create a more attractive gateway to Fairview Hospital, Kuri said.
This is how the new parking garage could look from the corner of Allien and West 179th Street. New, albeit mature evergreens are shown where West 179th now continues to the left or south of Allien. The street closure is intended to keep traffic off residential streets and the evergreens are planned to screen the garage from the neighborhood (Cleveland Clinic).
“I think the surface lot that the Clinic owns, the tiny one (at 17840 Lorain), ought to be a concession to remove it and have more of a gateway green experience there,” she said, offering a new vision. “You hit the knuckle (on Lorain) and you don’t just see a surface parking lot and the side of a garage. So there’s a huge missed opportunity there to build something that could be more beautiful.”
City planner Nate Lull advised commissioners that the North Campus redevelopment needs more active frontage along Lorain to improve the pedestrian experience. The Clinic’s design team said they tried to address it by building structures along the sidewalk and by partially covering, or wrapping, the lower levels of the garage with active uses like building lobbies, stairwells and other indoor common spaces.
“We think it could expand upwards to all of the floors (of the garage) rather than just the first two floors as well as extend further east,” Lull said.
A traffic study was requested by commissioners as well. Planning staff said neighborhood concerns about traffic are shifting from the 50-plus-year-old, 700-space Groveland Avenue garage south of Lorain to the proposed new garage north of Lorain. An aging medical office building and its attached old garage will be demolished when their replacements are opened.
Fairview Hospital’s North Campus, to the left of Lorain Avenue, is where Cleveland Clinic officials plan to redevelop the hospital’s medical and parking facilities. That will allow the hospital to replace older structures at the hospital (Google).
The Clinic has proposed blocking off West 179th Street at Allien Avenue so that West 179th is no longer a through street. It will instead be an access roadway to the parking garage. All of the properties on that street except two, a house and a business, were acquired and are being demolished by the Clinic to serve as a buffer.
The house and the Thumbs Up Deli are both owned by George and Terri Gorze. Negotiations between the Clinic and Gorze broke off earlier this year when Gorze said the Clinic offered below market value for their properties. George Gorze said the Clinic is trying to make his surroundings so unattractive and unsafe for him and his family so as to force him to sell. Clinic officials declined to discuss negotiations with property owners.
West Park Kamms Neighborhood Development Corp. Executive Director David Robinson, who joined the CDC in May, said the Clinic has made many concessions in response to neighborhood concerns. That included reducing the scale of the North Campus. The cancer center/medical office building was reduced from six stories to five and the parking garage from seven levels to six.
“That, I look at, as one of the biggest concessions the Clinic has made in terms of the community concerns that have been raised,” Robinson said at Friday’s meeting. “To be clear, this is not an expansion of services. Rather it is a facility upgrade to existing service. This isn’t bringing new staff or new patients into the facility. So in essence the parking demand is already there and not met. This is really meeting the demand of the people already coming into the facility.”
Proposed rezonings to the Fairview Hospital campus. The current zoning is identified in the middle of each zoning district with LR-C4, for example, referring to local retail rezoning, in a C density district and a 4 height district. A C district means the square footage of buildings there cannot exceed 50 percent of the lot area and 4 height district means buildings cannot be taller than 175 feet high (CPC).
He noted that some jobs will be leaving Fairview Hospital to go elsewhere — namely pediatrics care moving to a new site in Rocky River. That means there will be less parking demand at Fairview, he said, reminding that employees are currently having to park at the I-X Center several miles south and be shuttled to and from work.
“But to quell the concerns of some of those community members, in the long run, this project should reduce the amount of vehicles that are parking in the neighborhood and elsewhere, such as shopping plazas,” Robinson added. “We’re quite proud of some of the concessions the Clinic has made as they’ve gone through this project and wanted to voice our support for its continuation.”
After the commission’s vote on the North Campus redevelopment plan, it voted to recommend rezoning the entire Fairview Hospital campus with an institutional research classification and a height district allowing buildings up to 115 feet tall. Much of the South Campus is currently zoned for local retail and allowing structures up to 175 feet.
The North Campus is zoned with a mix of single- and multi-family residential and a height district limiting structures to only 35 feet tall. Also to be changed are the building setback and density requirements so building footprints can fill out their parcels. The 15-foot setbacks along both sides of Lorain are to be removed, if City Council votes to agree with Planning Commission.
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