jeremy borger [blog]

I like to discuss urban development happening in d…

I like to discuss urban development happening in downtown Cleveland both because it’s a topic that just plain interests me and because I want to encourage people in one of the demographics I belong to — single professionals in their 20’s and 30’s — to move downtown, or at least to one of Cleveland’s neighborhoods such as Ohio City or Tremont. If you’re between 21 and 39-years-old and work in northeast Ohio, I don’t know why you’d want to live in the suburbs.

Lately as I’ve been driving down the Jennings Freeway, I’ve noticed some development happening to the east, down by the old steel mills. I wondered if this was the “Steelyard Commons” retail project I’ve been hearing about. It is. Steelyard Commons is a new retail center being built by the same developer who made Legacy Village in the eastern suburb of Lyndhurst. The site was once occupied by a steel mill (and a working steel mill will occupy the eastern skyline of the project) but is being converted into about one million square feet of retail space (Legacy Village is about 610,000 square feet), including a Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Target, Best Buy, Staples, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Old Navy, Books-A-Millions, Petco, Radio Shack, Marshalls, Dots, Payless Shoe Source, Fashion Bug and Famous Footware. It will also include food places such as Taco Bell, Burger King, Steak N’ Shake, Ruby Tuesday and yes, CHIPOTLE!

Another awesome aspect of this project is that the six-mile long extension of the Ohio & Erie Canal Towpath Trail will run through it. Right now, the trail goes as far north as Harvard Avenue in Cuyahoga Falls and heads south through the Cuyahoga Valley National Park down to Akron. But future plans call for the trail to be extended all the way to a new park in the Flats. You’ll be able to bike along a scenic path from the Flats in Cleveland down south to Akron if you wish. And that path will cut through Steelyard Commons. Pretty cool. I’ll be much more motivated to take a bike path to Akron if I know there’s a Chipotle along the way…

So how will you get there? Well, besides biking or walking the towpath trail, West 14th Street will be extended south past Holmden Avenue, which will make Steelyard Commons easily accessible for people living in Tremont. There will apparently also be new access ramps or something to make it accessible from I-71 and I-77 (it’s pretty much right between those highways) as well as the Jennings Freeway. (here’s a PDF of the site plan)

The Avenue District is another retail/living space combination being built downtown, starting at East 12th and St. Clair, east of The Galleria. Ground is expected to be broken this year.

The upcoming project that I’m most excited about, and one of the reasons I chose to buy a loft where I did, is Stark Enterprises’ $1 billion project in the Warehouse District. Stark built Crocker Park in the western suburb of Westlake, another “lifestyle center” similar to Legacy Village (although I think Crocker Park is better, except Legacy Village has an Apple Store. BUT ONE IS COMING TO CROCKER PARK! Sorry, wrong audience…) as well as Eton in the eastern suburb of Woodmere.

But Robert Stark himself has admitted these suburban lifestyle centers “insidiously imitate real cities by constructing faux second-floor offices or residences above stores in what’s really just a shopping center.” He sees his future development downtown as another step in Cleveland’s comeback and part of an overall return of people to urban centers. “Finally, after 50 years of humiliation and defeat at the hands of suburban sprawl, urban centers can provide something that the suburbs cannot. … The cultural pendulum has swung back to fuel a demand for a working and living lifestyle that can only be found on ‘vibrant’ city streets.”

“We can build real mixed-use environments based on high ideals and a sense of social responsibility; to do something profoundly restorative for society by creating holistic mixed-use neighborhoods,” Stark says.

Stark recently purchased the two main parking lots surrounded by West 6th, West 3rd, St. Clair and Superior Avenue. He also owns the lot at the corner of West 3rd and St. Clair. The project will eventually cover the area from West 3rd to West 9th and Superior to St. Clair with multiple buildings of up to 10 stories, holding 7 million square feet of retail, residential and office space. (Crocker Park has 2 million square feet in three story buildings) That initial phase is set to open in 2009. Conceptual pictures and an audio story regarding the project can be found on WCPN’s website.

Crocker Park is cool, but it’s separated from the rest of Westlake. There’s a couple of entrances, but once you’re inside, you’re stuck. It’s like a movie set: prefab and fake. Stark’s warehouse district project will be a part of downtown. There will be no “grand entrance”. It won’t be cut off from the surrounding area. It’s a part of the city itself.

I see these developments happening downtown and it assures me that the worst is in the past and Cleveland’s best is yet to come. These are private companies committing BILLIONS of dollars to downtown development, not some city councilman with a pie-in-the-sky idea. Businessmen don’t throw around that kind of money unless they know it’s going to work.

So buy that downtown loft now before prices skyrocket.