Lakewood Nears Final Approval for Development on Former Lakewood Hospital Site

Updated renderings for housing on Lakewood’s “Pit” were released this month. Credit: Dimit Architects

The six-acre site formerly occupied by the Lakewood Hospital—known affectionately as “The Pit” to Lakewooders—is set to be developed with the help of tax-increment financing, to the chagrin of residents watching the project move along.

On Tuesday evening, Lakewood City Council met with the Lakewood Board of Education to present the latest of Casto and Dimit Architects’ site plans promising to hold 298 housing units.

And to discuss whether or not that development, amid years of debate by residents, is worthy of tax increment financing to make it happen.

Dave Baas, Lakewood’s assistant director of planning, led the city’s ask. Baas sold the project as needed to fill the six acres, which represents the city’s most arduously reviewed pieces of development in recent history.

We’ve been through “at least nine or ten formal, public meetings, and a variety of other public meetings and open houses,” Baas said.

“And that’s just the final review of this,” he added. “It has been a long public process that this project’s been through. And we are in the eleventh hour to get to the final goal line.”

Long sold as a potential town square center for a city badly in need of one, the Lakewood Pit has struggled since its eponymous hospital vacated in 2016 (and was torn down in 2020), leaving a gaping hole in a Cleveland suburb used to dense housing development.

Which is what Casto and Dimit seem to have packaged for, come early next week, a final yea or nay vote by a Lakewood City Council eager to let construction crews get to work. Along with a tax abatement, Council could finally approve a four-building plan replete with a five-story apartment building, seven-suite townhouses, an attached parking garage, all pockmarked with shade trees, pet stations, twig benches and enough tables and chairs to constitute a suitable town square. (And matching lawn space.)

All plans that have scaled since they were re-proposed earlier this summer. There used to be plans for two buildings for townhomes, not one. And an anticipated grocery chain backed out earlier this year.

Residents, some of whom rallied around a semi-ironic “Lakewood Pit” Facebook group, have seemed to reach a kind of shoulder-shrug stance as the Pit nears extinction, with some feeling more ire when dollars and cents are considered, with tax perks for developers being kicked around.

The ‘Pit’, as residents have come to call it, is a six-acre plot of vacant land in between Marlow and Belle in Downtown Lakewood. It’s gained a sort of cult status online. Credit: Mark Oprea

It’s “gentrification at its finest,” one commented. “The city leads the charge.”

“We as Lakewood taxpayers just got ran over,” Brian Higgins wrote, referring to the October 29 joint meeting suggesting tax perks for Casto. “Nine years, and this is what Lakewood got—it’s sad.”

Jason Bilak, a 46-year-old resident on Belle two blocks south of the Pit and who manages the Facebook page, felt the same kind of cynicism. When interviewed Wednesday, Bilak immediately attached his reaction to the controversy behind the Pit’s former tenant.

“Everyone feels like the city’s getting shafted again, just like we did from the hospital,” Bilak said, referring to Lakewood Hospital’s decision to vacate.

But the apartments! The potential for a Christmas tree! For congregation!

“It’s just kind of a cookie-cutter thing that they’re just kind of assembling and putting together,” Bilak added. “I can’t see any real benefit for the city besides not having empty lot there. I mean, the whole purpose was [getting it] developed to generate tax revenue!”

Scene called Lakewood City Planning for comment but did not hear back Wednesday.

Lakewood City Council is set to review the plans in November, with, as Baas said Tuesday, a development agreement (along with a TIF) possibly arriving by the end of the year.

Which means, if everything goes as planned, Casto could have shovels in the ground in 2025.

An image that Bilak agrees isn’t that bad.

“Yeah, it’s better to have something than nothing,” he said.