The fate of East Cleveland

By Ken Prendergast / August 23, 2023

In the 1950s, after my mother Edith March Prendergast divorced her first husband, she moved herself and her two boys to Greater Cleveland to be near family. After a brief stay at the Alcazar Hotel, she settled at the south end of Glenmont Avenue in Cleveland Heights. Then she moved to the north end of Glenmont which is in East Cleveland. There, she, Dale and Dean stayed until the early 1960s when she married my father James and moved into his home in Lyndhurst.

Would Cliffs + USS = a new tower?

By Ken Prendergast / August 15, 2023

Three years ago, when Cleveland-Cliffs made some big moves, NEOtrans asked the question. Three years later, we’re asking it again. If Cliffs is able to acquire rival United States Steel (USS), as recently proposed, what impact might this have on the combined company’s headquarters situation?

GCRTA stations: lots of opportunity

By Ken Prendergast / August 3, 2023

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.

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

By Ken Prendergast / August 1, 2023

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.

Reynolds enters Midwest market with local buy

By Ken Prendergast / July 24, 2023

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.

City considers re-legalizing the city again

By Ken Prendergast / July 22, 2023

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.

TMUD round 3 starts next week

By Ken Prendergast / July 21, 2023

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?

Erieview Tower redo faces setbacks

By Ken Prendergast / June 14, 2023

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.

BofA: they’re coming to Cleveland

By Ken Prendergast / June 8, 2023

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.

Greater Cleveland: poverty amid plenty

By Ken Prendergast / May 23, 2023

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.

Economic trends