The development team behind Project 29 landed before the Cleveland Planning Commission this morning, and, by most accounts, they’re well on their way to securing approval for an 11-story, 163-unit mixed-use site on Detroit Avenue between West 29th and West 28th. The project proposes two buildings (“The Church” and “The State”), split by a walkway that would be used for anything from concerts to wedding receptions. It’s backed by westside power couple Graham Veysey and Marika Shioiri-Clark.
But despite an apparent “thumbs up” from the neighborhood block club earlier this year, some Ohio City residents are saying that Project 29 doesn’t jibe with the tone and character of the neighborhood. It’s a precedent-setting step in the wrong direction, according to Church Avenue resident Bill Merriman.
“We don’t want to live on West 25th Street,” he said this morning. “We want to maintain the village atmosphere that Ohio City is so well known for.” He prefaced his remarks on Project 29 with a lengthy soliloquy on the generations of trust built up among neighbors — both longtime residents and newer business owners alike. “This is a very vital thing,” Merriman said, referencing the ongoing dialogue that keeps issues like parking, noise and late-night hours in a transparent spotlight for everyone in the neighborhood to discuss. This is, Merriman insisted, how you foster a neighborhood.
With all that said, the antecedent of Project 29 is developer Brent Zimmerman’s Saucy Brew Works, a massive self-serve brewery and pizza joint on the corner of West 29th Street and Detroit Avenue. Based on sheer scope alone, the brewery will no doubt bring the craft beer fan base to “Hingetown.” Originally, Zimmerman promised 44 off-street parking spaces (just east of the Saucy building), ameliorating traffic congestion concerns from the neighbors and, generally, keeping with the transparency that Merriman mentioned today.
Project 29 would erase Zimmerman’s parking lot plan, building an 11-story tower right next to Saucy. The residential project would include parking garages for tenants, yes, but that doesn’t address the inevitable increase in demand for parking spaces as “Hingetown” more fully embraces its “entertainment and retail opportunities.” Developers hinted this morning that they may fund a traffic study on West 25th (between Bridge and Detroit) to see if there’s a way to install parallel public parking spaces there. The phrase “working with the neighborhood to explore options” was used. It’s unclear how that will manifest.
The Planning Commission meeting concluded with member David Bowen pointing out that “parking is going to change in the next five years.” Scene inferred that he was talking about a general trend toward more cycling, more public transit use, more walkability in Cleveland. One supposes that that’s a good point, and Merriman’s exposition of neighborhood dynamics seemed to track with that.
But the actual thesis of Merriman’s comments had less to do with parking lots and more to do with that word that he kept returning to: “trust.” Scene has spoken with other “Hingetown” residents in the past, and they’ve echoed that sentiment, that idea that developers would do well to keep their promises and engage the character and tone of a neighborhood. (We would encourage you to read Belt‘s landmark essay on the place.) Merriman has been an active participant in that part of town for years, and he’s not alone in his concern for where these “growing pains” are taking Cleveland’s westside hamlets. So far, though, the incoming businesses have worked hand in hand with his block club’s hopes.
“And then suddenly there’s an 11-story building right there!” Merriman exclaimed before the rapt Planning Commission today. “I felt like somebody pulled the rug out from under us.”
If all goes according to plan and process, the Church and State properties would be open by spring or summer 2019. Project 29 would join similarly styled outfits at the Snavely Group site (194 units at West 25th and Detroit) and Mariner’s Watch (62 units at West 32nd and Detroit). Also discussed at this morning’s Planning Commission meeting was a high-end townhouse project at West 70th Street and Father Caruso Drive, which joins a battery of luxury residences in Battery Park and the new Edison project (306 units and “an entertainment/club space” at the northern terminus of West 65th Street).
This article appears in Apr 19-25, 2017.
Oh yes, let’s make sure Ohio City doesn’t lose the character of its glory days from 1950 – 2010 :eyeroll:
Thank you, Eric, for covering this and bringing attention to those of us who have lived and worked to have genuine community here for decades.
Oh please. This guy lives a block south of DETROIT AVENUE, one of the main thoroughfares of the entire western half of Cuyahoga County. It’s not like they’re proposing an 11-story building on Whitman. Detroit’s a main street- it should look like and have the vibe of one!
Can’t help but notice that the two people who don’t live here and aren’t part of the longtime near west side community are also unwilling to post under their own names while disparaging the neighbhorhood. Brave stuff right there.
And so the saga continues, and the Brooklynization of the Near West Side marches on like an army of steamrollers. Ohio City today, Gordon Square tomorrow…and who knows what else…and where else…in a month or a year.
Hingetown, we hardly knew ye. Stupid name anyway, Still Ohio City to most folks.
Make way for the rowdy late-night drinkers, and the hordes of well-heeled Millennial yupsters who will visit, and the young high-rolers who will reside there, stacked up on top of each other like cans of beans in a grocery display. Good-bye to the older, long-time has-beans.
If the affluent and beer-fueled corner of 29th and Detroit MUST have a label…I humbly suggest…Bingetown.
Chuckles the Clown
* big knowing sigh….
I’d say, several hundred brave people made this all possible over 20-30 years perseverance. Amazing.
Now the cash is pouring in.
Smart people are now looking East.
Yeah. to East Cleveland., as University Circle’s gentrification wave will break in that direction, and the smart money will get on their smartphones and pick up a whole block for a song. Smart!
Hell, maybe they’ll only need to hum a few bars.
The artsy-fartsy crowd got pushed out of Tremont. Then Ohio City. And finally Gordon Square.
Next stop…North Collinwood? That will go the way of the other places, too. They all do.
It’s the way of the world. Happens everywhere.
Chuckles the Clown
You guys are so right. I mean, I can’t believe a location has become desirable and someone wants to invest money in it to develop what’s currently a vacant piece of land with abandoned buildings on it. What a heartless jerk that developer is. Doesn’t he know that two or three streets away there are some houses? Doesn’t he know that once you build something and create a “neighborhood”, it should never change? I don’t care if they were built 100+ years ago or not. Or if there is literally a 6 lane freeway right across the street. If dude isn’t building 1200SF single family homes, GTFO! And while we’re on the topic, someone find those Irish immigrant bastards who moved out after the depression. I don’t remember saying they could leave and let the gentrified steel workers move in.
Seriously now, where can we develop if not here? Apparently close-downtown communities are off limits because now we’re gentrifying them. But isn’t pushing folks to the suburbs supposedly bad as well? Urban sprawl AMIRITE!? So I guess downtown it is….but don’t tear down any old buildings, even if they’re about to fall down on their own (Stanley Block Building). It’s not like this proposal is to bulldoze a residential block and put in a sewage treatment plant. It’s a residential building with some commercial on a busy main thoroughfare to the west side. It pretty much aligns with what I see along Detroit right now, except it’s going to be new instead of old.
All that being said, in the spirit of unity I think we can agree on at least one thing: “Hingetown” is a stupid name and should never be repeated.
Looks like a high-end housing project.
It’s all about the the scale, dammit. A Chicago-style apartment building? At least a dozen teensy units (at maybe $1500 a month each) units per floor? No BFD…but why should the greedheads stop at a mere eleven stories and 163 units? Why not 22 stories and 326 units? Or 44 stories and 652 units? Or 88 stories and 1304 units?
Who cares about the parking for such a monstrosity? Millennials don’t want to drive or own cars anymore. doncha know. They’re doing it in Brooklyn (erecting massive1,000-unit towers), and all the slick magazines say Cleveland is the next Brooklyn, so why the hell not?
On a (rare) clear day, they could see forever…or at least to Sandusky.
Chuckles the Clown
You’re trying to be sarcastic, but I would agree with you seriously. Why stop at 22 stories? Stop at whatever story you want if you own the place. And make the units 150sf if you want. It’s your job to determine if there’s a market for what you’re building. Again, it’s on the corner of Detroit and W28th. That’s not a neighborhood. It’s a main thoroughfare. It’s not like he’s dropping it on the corner of W44th and Whitman among single family homes. And by the way, it’s a block or two from a number of other multistory highrise residential buildings so I don’t see what the big deal is.
As for parking, what’s required is defined by City code, not arbitrarily set by the developer.
Well, at least we see eye-to-eye on the stupidity of the use of “Hingetown”…and even SCENE is starting to agree…they made fun of it in their latest “Best of Cleveland” issue.
When nobody ever uses the “designated nomenclature”…look no further for examples than at at some of our biggest bridges and our ballpark…it’s a stupid name. Hope Memorial, Veterans Memorial, and Progressive have never caught on or become commonly used. Neither will this one.
West 29th and Detroit will always be part of Ohio City, as it should be, regardless of how gentrified it becomes, and how many yupsters and hipsters are stacked into its skies like a game of Jenga.
Chuckles the Clown
The entire north side of Detroit along the proposed land is a fucking parking lot.
There will always be people trying to stand in the way of progress. Fossils that don’t want to see the city grow if it grows into something that doesn’t resemble the 1950s.