Scene and Heard: Scene's News Blog

Archives RSS

  |  

Thursday, June 5, 2008

News Downtown Cleveland: Do we really need more vacant offices?

Posted by Pete Kotz on Thu, Jun 5, 2008 at 5:46 AM

vacant%20building.jpg
Artist's rendering of Dick Jacobs building three years after construction is completed.
While the wonders of Cleveland economics never cease, they recently took a turn toward the surpernatural with the announcement of a proposed new 21-story office tower in Public Square. With the real estate market in utter collapse, it seems the last thing we need is another vacant building. But never fear. This tower is different, because Dick Jacobs is proposing it. Jacobs, you may recall, is the multimillionaire developer who recently suckered county commissioners into buying the Ameritrust complex for $22 million. Never mind that the buildings were long-vacant, filled with asbestos, and so expensive to renovate that the county soon gave up trying. Jacobs has always been a fabulous sugar daddy for political campaigns, and the commissioners were more than happy to help him unload an albatross. The irony is that Jacobs now wants to build another massive building in a dying market -- at the same time the new developer of the Ameritrust complex, the K&D Group, is also planning to build tons of office space. This is what scientists call a glut on the market. —Lisa Rab

Comments (1)

Showing 1-1 of 1

Add a comment

Lisa Rab, are you some kind of real estate genius who knows things that others don't, or do you mereley pull dumb comments out of the air to express your ignorance? I'd love to know who hired you to report on the market for class-A office real estate in the Midwest/Great-Lakes region? Cleveland, alog with Honolulu, Philadelphia, and Milwaukee (among other cities)are all experiencing a shortage of the kind of office space that high-wage firms require for their employees (like the Eatons, and Squire Sanders of the world). When they vacate "Class B" space, it allows smaller firms, ventrure capital companies, and experimental cmpanies to come into the marketto incubate, and grow. Where is all this vacant real estate you seem to think exists out there? Do you recommend that Eaton relocate it's world headquarters to a forclosed duplex in Parma Heights? Please take a look at a real estate journal, or an ivestment newspaper before you feed such obscenely and offensively incorrect ideas to your readers in Cleveland. Cleveland (as opposed to Phoenix, or other ultra-sprawl cities)ranks quite high on the index of towns where a high concentration of office space is centralized in the urban core of the metro region, and new construction is required from time to time to allow for organic movement within the markt. My goodness the vacancy seems to be in your head, not in the Cleveland office market! Roy Schneider, Washington, DC

report   
Posted by Roy Schneider on June 6, 2008 at 5:39 PM
Subscribe to this thread:
By Email
With RSS
Showing 1-1 of 1

Add a comment

Most Commented On

Most Shared Stories

Top Viewed Stories

Top Commenters

Site Search

Facebook Activity

© 2012 Cleveland Scene: 1468 West Ninth Street, Suite 805, Cleveland, OH 44113, (216) 241-7550
Logos and trademarks on this site are property of their respective owners.