Economic trends

Trending News in Northeast Ohio jobs, economy, labor, immigration, and population

GCRTA stations: lots of opportunity

In recent months, the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority (GCRTA) has served notice that its rail system isn’t going anywhere. And that could be interpreted in one of two ways. In one way, GCRTA plans to invest $540 million by the end of this decade to rebuild its 34-mile rail system including a new, standardized light-rail fleet plus rebuilt tracks and stations on the Red, Blue and Green lines. Greater Cleveland’s “Rapid” is sticking around for decades to come. But taking it another way, there are no expansion plans while ridership on GCRTA buses and trains fell nearly 60 percent from 2013 to 2021 “led” by its rail system which fell even farther, from 9.3 million boardings in 2013 to 2.9 million in 2021.

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Seeds & Sprouts 31 – Oliva Steakhouse on downtown’s menu; Starting Point center opening at Link59; Lido Lounge stripped by George, BofA

While Oliva Steakhouse is due to open by the end of the year in downtown’s Warehouse District, and Starting Point child development agency is opening at Link59 in Midtown, old Lido Lounge in Westown is due to be replaced by a Bank of America branch.

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Seeds & Sprouts 31 – Oliva Steakhouse on downtown’s menu; Starting Point center opening at Link59; Lido Lounge stripped by George, BofA Read More »

Reynolds enters Midwest market with local buy

In a move that expands its portfolio westward into a new market, East Coast-based Reynolds Asset Management, with financing provided in partnership with Northwest Bank, announced it has closed on the acquisition of a 125-unit multifamily apartment complex in the Greater Cleveland area. It is Reynolds’ first real estate asset acquisition in the Midwest and the first of more deals it is seeking in the Cleveland-area market.

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City considers re-legalizing the city again

The city of Cleveland’s Board of Zoning Appeals’ docket regularly sees cases like this. On Monday, Sally Banks LLC will ask the board to allow it add a 1,100-square-foot addition to its popular Treehouse pub, 820 College Ave. in Tremont, without adding off-street parking spaces. It’s the second time the pub is expanding and it’s the second time it has had to go through the process of getting a variance to ignore the city’s zoning laws. Those zoning laws say the pub has to add an off-street parking space for every 100 square feet of new business space. The average cost per parking space to build a surface parking lot is $5,000, city data shows.

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TMUD round 3 starts next week

The desire for new-build projects in downtown Cleveland led to the creation of the state’s Transformational Mixed Use Development (TMUD) tax credit program nearly three years ago. But in the first two years of the four-year TMUD program, no developers of new-construction downtown projects have submitted applications. As the third round of TMUD will start next week, will a new-build project downtown finally be an applicant — or perhaps even a winner — despite of tightening labor and credit markets plus rising interest rates?

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Erieview Tower redo faces setbacks

Despite winning $23 million in tax credits to enable a $100 million historic and transformational redevelopment of the Tower at Erieview, two major proposed tenants are reportedly backing out of the project. Conversion of the 1964-built, 40-story office tower and its Galleria mall, 1301 E. 9th St., into a mixed-use complex could be facing an uphill climb with the apparent withdrawal of a luxury W Hotel and co-working chain Industrious.

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BofA: they’re coming to Cleveland

Another leading indicator of potential population growth in Greater Cleveland was published this week by Bank of America (BofA), one of the nation’s Big Four banking institutions, serving more than 10 percent of all bank deposits of the United States. In a BofA June report, it put Greater Cleveland among the top metro areas benefitting from pandemic-instigated domestic migration trends, with its positive inflow-over-outflow rate ranking up there with the likes of Austin, Tampa, Orlando and Dallas.

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Greater Cleveland: poverty amid plenty

Amid the good news in Ohio and especially in Greater Cleveland that unemployment has fallen to pre-pandemic lows is the harsh reality that inner-city joblessness remains high. This is despite thousands of jobs made available by economic growth and retiring Baby Boomers. Meanwhile, three-fourths of all available jobs are beyond the reach of public transportation or, where public transportation is fast and frequent, there are many jobs but few quality housing options.

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Cleveland is seeing ‘brain gain’ – for a change

For decades, Greater Cleveland has suffered from the loss of its college-educated citizens primarily to star-studded cities on the East and West Coasts. Now, for a change, this former industrial powerhouse on the North Coast is enjoying a net in-migration of more brain than brawn. And while the region is still seeing net outmigration of those without college degrees, the results are at worst uneven.

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Cleveland adds fewest apartments among major metros

New data from a leading North American real estate services firm shows that Greater Cleveland had the smallest number of new apartment units under construction in the USA in the fourth quarter of 2022. That snapshot of construction activity in America’s multi-family rental market shows that, not only is Greater Cleveland lagging way behind the nation’s largest metropolitan areas in adding new apartments, it’s also lagging behind many of its peer metros. The report comes as the City of Cleveland considers reducing its financial incentives for new developments.

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