Not every office tower in Downtown Cleveland is in distress and hurting for tenants. The 45-story 200 Public Square skyscraper is seeing the fruits of its investments in making a more attractive property (NEOtrans). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.
200 Public Square gains under new owners
Bad news has surrounded the nation’s office market ever since the global pandemic hit in 2020. It doesn’t matter if the property is in the suburbs, the mother city or downtown. Leasing is down, vacancies are up, many buildings are in fiscal distress and remote working has put landlords on the defensive.
But not every office property is hurting. Some buildings like 200 Public Square are actually leasing more space to new tenants or existing ones seeking to expand their footprints.
What is so special about this and other successful office buildings? The common theme among them is that their landlords are going on the offensive by investing in their properties to create workplaces where people actually want to be — a remarkable concept.
Consider the example of 200 Public Square — Downtown Cleveland’s third-tallest building at 45 stories and 658 feet. It has a new owner — a partnership of Namdar Realty Group and Mason Asset Management, both of Long Island, NY.
And the ownership group has a five-year capital plan plus a new building manager — Tammy Dorfeld of Namdar Realty Group and Public Square Realty, LLC.
The soaring 200 Public Square features a nine-story glassy atrium on the downtown square, offering a climate-protected, year-round setting to get out of the office for a bit and unwind (NEOtrans).
While the Class A building’s office occupancy of 75 percent is slightly below Downtown Cleveland’s average of 77 percent, 200 Public Square is moving in the upward direction after losing one of its largest tenants — Benesch Friedlander Coplan & Aronoff LLP.
In 2023, Benesch Law moved its Cleveland headquarters to Key Tower, 127 Public Square. That left a 120,000-square-foot hole at 200 Public Square, or 10 percent of the building’s total space. But it still had its two anchor tenants.
The tower bears the name of its lead tenant — the regional headquarters for Huntington Bancshares. It is also the global headquarters of Cleveland Cliffs and the corporate home for multiple law offices and financial firms who are growing and need more space.
And they’re staying, said Russell Rogers, senior vice president and principal at Colliers Cleveland. The commercial real estate agency has its regional office on the 10th floor of 200 Public Square.
“Namdar Realty Group and Colliers, as their exclusive broker, we have done an amazing job retaining and accommodating the expansion needs of the existing tenants and also attracting new tenants through attractive leasing terms and being a well-funded Landlord,” Rogers said.
This newly renovated café in one of 200 Public Square’s common areas is part of the effort to increase the building’s attractiveness (Colliers).
He pointed to a newly completed, major renovation project of the first- and second-floor main common areas. And design plans are being finalized to update some of the common-area corridors in the tower this year.
“Prior to the building sale, (former owner) DRA Advisors invested significantly in updating the fitness center, the four conference rooms, cafeteria seating/lounge area and the garage lobby entry,” Roger said.
The new owners pledged to also modernize the building’s elevators, expand the retail amenities along Euclid Avenue, as well as renovate the exterior sidewalks and entrances to address safety concerns and improve curb appeal, including new landscaping.
“Namdar, being one of the only well-capitalized and solvent downtown landlords, has continued to invest into their asset and provide generous tenant improvement allowances,” Rogers added.
Based on actual leasing activity, existing and prospective tenants are noticing. Office tenants are invariably on a flight to quality. And they’re landing at 200 Public Square.
Previously a dark passageway to the building’s parking garage, 200 Public Square’s prior owner DRA Advisors brightened up this and other common areas on the first and third floors (Colliers).
Taft Stettinius & Hollister, the largest law firm in the tower, is getting larger. Taft’s front door is on the 35th floor and has about 80,000 square feet of office space spread among several floors, Rogers explained.
The firm is expanding by another 20,000 square feet, adding more space on the 36th and 37th floors. He said Taft’s expansion involves moving 7,000 square feet of its office space from a floor that’s not contiguous to the rest of its offices to one that is.
“The balance of their expansion is growth,” Roger said. Although a cost figure for the expansion is not yet available, it is likely in the millions of dollars based on another tenant’s investment.
To make way for Taft’s expansion, Citizens Capital Markets is moving its offices from the 37th floor to a 7,098-square-foot space on the 25th floor. There it will make $1 million worth of renovations to that space, according to a permit application submitted to the city last week.
Then there’s law firm Frantz Ward LLP. It not only decided to stay on the 30th floor by renewing its lease, it expanded it. Frantz Ward is adding another 6,600 square feet on an adjacent floor, bringing its total to approximately 52,000 square feet.
The 200 Public Square office tower is a premier place for doing business in Downtown Cleveland (Adam Greene).
Yet another law firm, Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease LLP, renewed and expanded beyond the 14th floor at 200 Public Square. Vorys is expanding by 2,400 square feet for a total of about 41,000 square feet.
And since law firms often like to be in the same building together, it’s probably no surprise that Miller Canfield PLC opted to leave the 17th floor of 1100 Superior Ave. for the 20th floor of 200 Public Square, Rogers noted.
The 21-story 1100 Superior was sold at auction in October 2025 to Brady Sullivan Properties from the building’s lender, LNR Partners LLC, for a mere $8.1 million, or just $14 per square foot. The property last sold in 2007 for $47 million.
Brady Sullivan is converting floors 3-5, 9, and 13-15 from office spaces to 160 apartments, according to pending permit applications with the city. Some of the work is already underway, in perhaps one of the most unheralded office conversions downtown.
More tenants are filling 200 Public Square. Rogers said he’s “Wrapping up a few more large leases” but couldn’t share details yet. One is leaving — Northern Trust financial services is moving to an 8,000-square-foot office at Fifth Third Bank Tower, 600 Superior Ave. But Cleveland Cliffs wants to expand and fill the void they’ll leave.
At night, the illuminated crown of 200 Public Square stands out amid Downtown Cleveland’s other tall buildings (NEOtrans).
The 1.2-million-square-foot tower clad in pink granite was built in 1985 as the headquarters of Standard Ohio of Ohio (Sohio) until BP America acquired it two years later and left for Chicago in 1998. The building stabilized over the next 25 years but suffered another setback in 2023.
That’s when a growing Benesch Law left for a larger, 164,000-square-foot office footprint on floors 42-49 at Key Tower, Downtown Cleveland’s tallest skyscraper. It was the only Class A building downtown able to accommodate Benesch’s expansion.
That departure, combined with the lingering effects of the pandemic on the office market, allowed the Namdar-Mason partnership to get a good deal on 200 Public Square, purchasing it from a joint venture led by New York City-based DRA Advisors for just $54 million in a story broken by NEOtrans.
Bought separately was its attached, 750-space parking garage. Chicago-based InterPark Holdings Co. paid $31.25 million for the five-level garage, according to county property records.
That combined total of $85.25 million was a substantial discount from its previous sale price. In 2018, the DRA-led joint venture G&I IX 200 Public Square LLC paid $187 million for the office tower and parking garage together.
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