Looking west along Superior Avenue toward Downtown Cleveland, the St. Clair-Superior neighborhood is to the right of Superior where Cleveland’s Mandel Foundation is making big investments to support redevelopment efforts including new murals seen at the bottom (SCSDC). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.
Development, parks, training to boost area
If you’ve noticed the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Foundation‘s name on some recent, significant investments in Cleveland’s St. Clair-Superior neighborhood, that’s not just because applicants from that area happened to submit some compelling grant requests at roughly the same time.
Instead, it’s because the foundation is focusing its resources on this neighborhood. In just the past three years, the Downtown Cleveland-based Mandel Foundation has awarded more than $20 million in grants for planning, programming and capital improvement projects in the neighborhood.
Starting in 2023, local placemaking nonprofit consultant LAND studio received a $725,000 grant from the Mandel Foundation to lead revitalization efforts in St. Clair Superior, which is set between Downtown and Glenville, and north of Superior Avenue to Lake Erie.
As a result, LAND studio is leading a community-driven process for a redesigned South Gordon Park, initiate placemaking efforts in the neighborhood that include community represented public art, and work in collaboration with the St. Clair-Superior Development Corporation (SCSDC) to create an economic development strategy.
As a part of that effort, a Lakefront Working Group was established to guide community building efforts. The group meets every two months and includes SCSDC, Mandel Foundation, Cleveland Metroparks, LAND studio, Enterprise Community Partners, Strategy Design Partners and the Western Reserve Land Conservancy.
St. Clair Avenue’s commercial districts east of downtown have held up over the decades despite other areas to the east and south suffering large-scale abandonment. To the right is the Slovenian National Home and the recently expanded St. Martin de Porres High School is across the street in the next block closer to downtown (Google).
Renowned planning firm DumontJanks of Boston was hired to assist. It identified three community building efforts to focus on — economic development, housing including pilot housing developments, and infrastructure. So far, in dollar terms, much of Mandel’s investments have gone into infrastructure.
So, additionally in 2023, the Mandel Foundation granted $8 million to Cleveland Metroparks for the management of the 48-acre portion of Gordon Park south of Interstate 90 between East 72nd Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Drive.
The oft-overlooked southern part of Gordon Park, which included the long-vacant aquarium, immediately started seeing clean-up and revitalization efforts get underway.
And, at that same time, Mandel awarded $5 million to Cleveland Metroparks for construction of the 2.7-mile Mandel Community Trail along North Marginal Road, from East 9th Street downtown to East 55th Street.
It was complemented by $5.6 million from the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency (NOACA) through the Federal Highway Administration’s Carbon Reduction Program and local match funds provided by Cuyahoga County and the City of Cleveland.
Construction is underway on the Patrick S. Parker Community Sailing Center and The Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Boathouse at the East 55th Marina. It includes two restaurants, classrooms and rooftop decks (Metroparks).
The Mandel Foundation gave a $3 million grant in 2024 to support the construction of the $18 million Patrick S. Parker Community Sailing Center and The Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Boathouse at the East 55th Marina. Construction got underway in May.
This is next to where Lake Erie’s shoreline will be reconfigured with new recreation and an island over the coming two decades, resulting from the Cleveland Harbor Eastern Embayment Resilience Strategy (CHEERS) led by the Port of Cleveland and supported by the city, county, state and the Metroparks.
And, in June of this year, the Mandel Foundation granted $5.1 million to the Metroparks to help extend the Mandel Community Trail from East 55th Street to Martin Luther King Jr. Drive. On Aug. 13, a groundbreaking ceremony was held for the first phase west of East 55th.
“Lake Erie is an integral part of our city and region – from our environmental health, our economic vitality and our cultural heritage,” said Mandel Foundation Chair Stephen Hoffman in a written statement.
“We are pleased to be partnering with the Metroparks and other stakeholders to help fund the construction of this transformative new trail that will serve as a catalyst for tremendous investment in furthering lakefront access and recreational opportunities for all our citizens, but especially the residents of neighborhoods that are adjacent to Lake Erie within the City of Cleveland,” he added.
Construction is underway for the Mandel Community Trail, seen at left along Interstate 90 and North Marginal Road, looking east from near Downtown Cleveland (OHGO-ODOT).
Planned next to this trail is the first new-construction multifamily housing development at Lake Erie’s edge in Cleveland since the Harbor Verandas, 1050 E. 9th St., was built in 2018. Indiana-based The Annex Group plans to build on 4.28 acres of vacant land at 5475 N. Marginal Rd. up to 209 affordable apartments called Union At Cleveland Harbor.
But helping St. Clair-Superior isn’t just about capital projects. Former Cleveland Mayor Michael White is engaged here as the senior policy advisor and program director for the foundation’s Neighborhood Leadership Development Program (NLDP) and its Community Development Corporation Leadership Program (CDCLP).
His efforts are focused on enhancing the skills of young people through training offered by the two leadership development programs. That includes supporting entrepreneurs, vision makers, community developers, artists and others to encourage their efforts in building St. Clair-Superior.
Human resources are a key to making that happen. And the Lakefront Working Group is how those resources are being organized, White said.
“The Lakefront Working Group creates a cauldron to work on multiple projects simultaneously,” he said in a recent interview with NEOtrans. “We’re going to see housing and economic development as their next big focus areas.”
Locations of recent and planned murals in the St. Clair-Superior neighborhood (Mandel).
Mandel has worked in community development for much of its history, starting not long after Cleveland’s Mandel brothers – Jack, Joseph and Morton – pooled together $900 in 1940 to purchase a small auto parts business from their uncle Jacob Mandel. That business grew to be a multi-billion-dollar global enterprise called Premier Industrial Corp.
They started their first charitable foundation in 1953 and, in 1960, led the establishment of MidTown Cleveland, a community development agency in the neighborhood Premier first called home. But why is the Mandel Foundation interested in St. Clair-Superior?
“We wanted to go into more neighborhoods where there are residents who care about their communities,” White said. “St. Clair-Superior is a diverse neighborhood with (part of) Asiatown, Eastern Europeans and of course a strong African-American base. The lake is an asset and this neighborhood is proximate to it. And it still has great bones. It hasn’t seen the abandonment experienced by areas to the east and south.”
The neighborhood is easily accessible by car, bike or transit to Ohio’s first- and fourth-largest employment hubs — Downtown Cleveland and University Circle. White has often said that having a job is the best social program there is.
He also noted the industrial areas along Perkins Avenue west of East 55th and those north of St. Clair where many industries are still going strong, albeit in tired-looking settings. Those nodes are targeted for cosmetic fixes including murals and banners.
The “Blossom Wall” mural was painted by Louis “Ouzi” Jones on this retaining wall along East 72nd Street. It is the largest mural in the City of Cleveland (Mandel).
The city’s largest mural, a 1,400-foot floral mural called “Blossom Wall” created by artist Louise “Ouzi” Jones, was added to a retaining wall along East 72nd Street. It was supported by the Mandel Foundation and SCSDC.
Meanwhile, artists and their businesses — workshops, galleries and studios — have been establishing themselves in the neighborhood or expanding to it. They include Ingenuity, Zygote Press, Pixel Planet Studios, and the Cleveland Play House Production Center to name a few. They offer a talent pool to help tell the neighborhood’s story.
CDCLP Assistant Program Director Jillian Svala said telling that story and promoting its future are among Mandel’s current efforts. Pixel Planet has made a video about the neighborhood. Agnes Studio, a branding firm from the neighborhood, and Little Jacket marketing consultant from Little Italy are joining forces on a promotional campaign.
Speaking of the future, all eyes are on the neighborhood’s quiet elephant in the room — the 62-acre site of the former Lake Shore Power Plant, 6800 S. Marginal Rd. Another 4 acres of city land bank land are immediately to the west.
Site plan and uses proposed for an Urban Land Institute context by the winning Harvard-MIT team for its “Lakeshore” development concept along the Lake Erie waterfront, between East 55th and 72nd streets, just east of Downtown Cleveland. This was the site of the Lake Shore Power Station (Harvard-ULI).
“It’s one of the neighborhood’s greatest opportunities,” White said. “It has the potential to be transformational for the neighborhood.”
The vacant site was the subject of a global competition earlier this year, sponsored by the Urban Land Institute. A design team comprised of Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) students won first place in the contest that attracted 83 competitive teams from around the world.
But what was perhaps most notable about the competition was that all of the teams envisioned mixed-use development concepts for transformative megaprojects given the size of the site and its lakefront location near downtown. None proposed industrial or warehousing uses.
The site became a development opportunity on Cleveland’s lakefront after a First Energy power plant was razed in 2017 and the land was bought in 2023 by IDA, a company that repurposes former power plants sites primarily with new industries. NEOtrans was first to report on the property acquisition.
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