Cedar Avenue is a busy place — for Cleveland Clinic’s real estate department. At right is the Emergency Department that will expand and erase all but the nearest row of parking spaces in the lot. So the Clinic is acquiring properties just beyond East 90th Street in the background for parking, prompting a shift in other development plans. The Clinic’s new Neurological Institute towers behind (Google). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.
Parking, development drive new purchases
Dust rarely settles on Cleveland Clinic’s real estate staff. They’re always out shopping for more land to accommodate growth. And their latest acquisitions for the Main Campus are concentrated along its southern fringes on Cedar Avenue for two different reasons.
The two reasons are tied to two different locations — one on either side of the Cleveland Clinic’s to-be-expanded Emergency Department, 9105 Cedar Ave., in Cleveland’s Fairfax neighborhood.
And like the real estate slide-puzzle shuffle in which the Clinic is engaged on the north side of its Main Campus, that NEOtrans revealed last week, another is starting on the south side of the campus, too.
In fact, the expanding Emergency Department is directly motivating this land shuffle by the Clinic. Detailed design and permitting work by Hasenstab Architects, Inc. of Cleveland is underway for the 120,000-square-foot expansion of the Clinic’s 1994-built, 228,000-square-foot Maria & Sam Miller Emergency Services Building.
That expansion will be constructed on the Emergency Department’s 112-space parking lot, or at least most of that lot, erasing 95 parking spaces. So only 17 spaces of the existing lot will remain, although 13 new parking spaces will be added along a vacated East 93rd north of Cedar, plans show.
Another Cleveland Clinic-induced real estate shuffle is underway along Cedar Avenue. Light-blue properties are those that have been owned by the Clinic for more than five years. Clinic real estate purchases made in July are seen at upper right in a more intense blue. Green parcels are those that the Clinic is in the process of acquiring. And orange parcels are those owned by the City Land Bank or Fairfax Renaissance CDC (Google).
Thirty parking spaces isn’t enough for the existing Emergency Department let alone one expanded by 53 percent. So the Clinic’s real estate staff went shopping — again.
Clinic parking cannot be added directly south across Cedar from the Emergency Department because the Gardens of Fairfax Healthcare Center is located there. And its facilities are doubling in size over the site of a recently demolished, 1891-built, Charles Schweinfurth-designed Infants Rest Inner City Nursing Home.
So the Clinic looked west. But across East 90th Street is where Bikur Cholim’s $10 million Cleveland Comfort Center was planned to be built so visiting families of patients can be close to them and support them. It is still in the early stages of pre-development.
The Cleveland Heights-based nonprofit organization, whose Hebrew name Bikur Cholim translates to “visiting the sick,” had so far acquired three parcels of land, two as recently as May, according to Cuyahoga County property records.
Given that Bikur Cholim’s project is still in the early stages, it was fluid enough that a different plan could still be adopted. But since not all of the property transactions have closed or ground lease agreements signed, the revised plan remains confidential until about mid-August.
Conceptual site plan for the expansion of Cleveland Clinic’s Emergency Department which would be built on a majority of the department’s parking lot (Cleveland Clinic).
“Sorry, no comment at this time,” said Ari Jaffe, a board member at Bikur Cholim of Cleveland. “News within the next couple weeks.”
But enough information is available to see where things are headed. It started with two property sales that closed last week. The Clinic acquired 8921 and 8927 Cedar from affiliates of Activity Capital LLC of Woodmere for $550,000, county records show.
The two parcels, totaling 0.2 of an acre, are not contiguous. They are surrounded by parcels the Clinic acquired more than a decade ago — and by Bikur Cholim’s recently acquired parcels.
NEOtrans reached out to Daryl Kertesz, a partner in Activity Capital with Jon Schultz, who confirmed the transactions but also declined further comment, citing non-disclosure agreements with the Clinic.
Angela Smith, senior director of corporate communications at Cleveland Clinic, did reveal a small piece of how its new acquisitions would be used.
At right is 9300 Cedar — a private property that squeezes onto it as many Cleveland Clinic commuters’ cars as it can handle. Those that don’t fit instead park on East 93rd Street all day and are rewarded with citations stuffed under their windshield wipers. In the background at left is Cleveland Clinic’s expanding Emergency Department on Cedar Avenue that will erase all but 30 spaces of its 112-space parking lot (Google).
“I can confirm that 8921 and 8927 Cedar were purchased to support our parking needs,” she said.
But those parcels, even when combined with the Clinic’s older, adjacent acquisitions, are too small to provide enough parking to compensate for the loss of spaces from the expanded Emergency Department. And that’s where things get more interesting.
Multiple certificates of disclosure were filed in recent days by Birchway Title of Independence for four properties that the Cleveland Clinic is buying, Cleveland Building Department records show.
Three of the parcels are those that Bikur Cholim acquired on East 90th. The fourth is located farther east on Cedar, on the other side of the Emergency Department expansion site, at 9300 Cedar.
Smith declined to comment on those pending acquisitions by Cleveland Clinic since they haven’t yet closed.
A recent proposal for Bikur Cholim’s Cleveland Comfort House, seen here on East 90th Street just north of Cedar Avenue, will likely be considered for a new location farther east on Cedar. The reason is Cleveland Clinic’s Emergency Department, seen at right, needs more parking (Studio Techne).
But when the Bikur Cholim parcels, combined with the Clinic’s other parcels to the west of them, are added up, they amount to just under 1 acre or 43,000 square feet.
That’s enough space to accommodate about 140 parked cars with aisles and perhaps a little bit of landscaping. It would be visibly located just across East 90th from the expanded Emergency Department. And it’s enough to compensate for the loss of 95 parking spaces from Emergency Department’s 53 percent expansion.
The Emergency Department’s current parking lot is 112 spaces. Increasing that by 53 percent is 172 spaces — which is exactly how many spaces the Clinic could offer by adding Bikur Cholim’s properties to its parcels and future parking west of East 90th.
It appears that the Clinic’s acquisition of 9300 Cedar is part of a deal to provide Bikur Cholim with a new, larger, better-positioned site for its Cleveland Comfort House.
The site, which may include a City Land Bank lot and another Clinic-owned parcel next door, is closer to the geographic heart of the Clinic’s Main Campus and an easier walk to the Meijer Fairfax Market grocery store, four blocks east.
The 1920-built former Texaco service station, built in the Spanish style that was popular at that time, sets at the southeast corner of Cedar Avenue and East 93rd Street. It may be demolished as a result of the Cleveland Clinic acquiring this property for future development (Google).
A goal of the Cleveland Comfort House is to provide a walkable location so visitors don’t have to drive on Shabbat, from sundown Friday to nightfall Saturday. The Cleveland Comfort House is proposed to have 10 extended-stay suites, common area, kitchen facilities, meeting room, and small library.
The property the Clinic is acquiring is a 0.36-acre parcel currently owned by Ninety-Third Parking LLC. As the name suggests, the lot is used primarily for parking.
But a vacant, former Texaco gasoline and three-bay service station built in 1920 in the Spanish style that was popular a century ago remains standing. It will likely be demolished.
By combining 9300 Cedar, the City Land Bank lot and a Clinic-owned grassy lot at Cedar and East 95th Street, it could provide 0.8 acres for new development, parking and/or future expansion.
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