Transit Oriented Development

Now arriving: Woodhill Station East

By Ken Prendergast / November 16, 2023

A neighborhood-level design review panel today gave thumbs-up, with a few conditions, to conceptual plans for the next phase in the effort to replace the 83-year-old, 487-unit Woodhill Homes public housing in Cleveland’s Buckeye-Woodhill neighborhood. Woodhill Station East, a 64-unit mixed-income apartment complex with ground-floor retail at 9615 Buckeye Rd., is proposed to be the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority’s (CMHA) third phase in its Woodhill Redevelopment efforts that would ultimately result in the construction of 640 mixed-income housing units on the city’s east side.

Depot on Detroit plans at RTA station unveiled

By Ken Prendergast / October 13, 2023

Conceptual plans for a new apartment building to be located just west of the West Boulevard rapid transit station in Cleveland’s Cudell neighborhood were submitted to the city this week. Called the Depot on Detroit, it’s the latest in a series of new apartment buildings planned, under construction or built recently near stations on Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority (GCRTA) rail and bus rapid transit lines. These transit-oriented developments are intended to address poverty by shrinking the spatial disconnect between jobs and job-seekers caused by urban sprawl.

Ohio City’s largest build site: the Lutheran lot

By Ken Prendergast / October 6, 2023

Sooner or later, development pressures will find their way to Lutheran Hospital’s huge surface parking lot on West 25th Street in Cleveland’s Ohio City neighborhood. All around the 5-acre Cleveland Clinic Foundation-owned Lutheran Hospital parking lot, investors have built on or have big plans for just about every available piece of land. Even an unstable hillside across West 25th is being reborn as Irishtown Bend Park. There isn’t much room to grow. So the Cleveland Clinic, Ohio City Inc. and others are trying to get a handle on how best to develop the Lutheran lot someday in the future while making sure Clinic employees still have a place to park.

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.

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.

Six local housing projects win tax credits

By Ken Prendergast / May 18, 2023

Six housing developments in Cuyahoga County won federal Low-Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTCs) yesterday from the Ohio Housing Finance Agency (OHFA), improving their chances of seeing construction in the near future. Those projects and 23 others elsewhere around the state received conditional LIHTC commitments. Developers will use those awards to leverage additional financing in the creation or rehabilitation of rental housing for low- to moderate-income Ohioans.

East Cleveland on track for $100M project

By Ken Prendergast / February 16, 2023

Cuyahoga County Council’s approval yesterday of a property sale to a New York City-based developer could lead the way toward a “significant” development in the heart of East Cleveland. The site, at Euclid and Superior avenues, is just one-half-mile from the eastern edge of University Circle and set between stations on the HealthLine bus and Red Line rail rapid transit routes.

Sneak peek at GCRTA’s new trains

By Ken Prendergast / January 20, 2023

When the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority (GCRTA) acquired new Italian-built Breda trains for its Blue and Green light-rail lines linking Shaker Heights and downtown Cleveland, Jimmy Carter was still in the White House. It was only a few years later, in Ronald Reagan’s first term, when GCRTA received new Japanese-made Tokyu trains for its heavy-rail Red Line between Cleveland Hopkins Airport and Windermere. GCRTA is still relying on trains that predate the mullet. To say that these trains are due for a replacement is an understatement.

Slavic Village’s Broadway in transit

By Ken Prendergast / November 21, 2022

The beleaguered Broadway Avenue corridor in Cleveland’s Slavic Village could soon see new signs of life thanks to a federal grant that was awarded last week to the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority (GCRTA). The $432,000 grant will allow the transit agency to develop plans to redesign the Broadway corridor from the Turney-Ella bus loop to downtown as a bus rapid transit (BRT) route with enhanced pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure. Once those plans are complete, it can then apply for federal funds to build that infrastructure.

Affordable apartments planned at RTA station

By Ken Prendergast / October 25, 2022

An Indianapolis-based real estate developer is seeking to build affordable apartments just west of the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority’s (GCRTA) West Boulevard-Cudell rapid transit station on land owned by the transit authority. Today, the GCRTA Board approved giving that developer, Flaherty & Collins LLC, an option to purchase the land for the development of 60 to 80 apartments. The option, priced at $5,000, gives the developer site control so it can nail down financing and city approvals over the next year. If the developer needs more time, RTA can extend the option for another year for another $5,000.