Bedrock Riverfront Project, Sherwin Williams R&D Center Get Millions for Brownfield Cleanup

Seven development projects around Northeast Ohio, including Bedrock’s $3.5 billion riverfront complex on the Cuyahoga, were awarded millions in state funds for brownfield remediation this week.

Besides $10 million going to cleaning up the former parking lots south of Tower City Center, Ohio state reps announced that brownfield remediation money will flow to the Juvenile Justice Center site ($6.8 million), Old Brooklyn’s Memphis & Pearl apartments site ($2 million) and ground prep for the construction of Sherwin Williams’ brand new Research & Development Campus in Brecksville ($10 million).

The dollars will be used to excavate sites of harmful pollutants, or, say, remove idling gas tanks, that would otherwise prevent construction from happening. That work, State Rep. Sean Patrick Brennan (Parma) said, would put 1,000 people to work in Northeast Ohio.

“These funds will be put to good use making our neighborhoods safer, creating jobs,” Brennan said in a statement on Tuesday, “and supporting growing the local economy for the benefit of all.”

Those tens of millions of dollars from the Ohio’s latest operating budget dovetails with Mayor Bibb’s rollout of the city’s new Site Readiness Fund, City Hall’s pool of money dedicated to tearing down blighted buildings or sanitizing vacant lots for the sake of developer appeal.

That fund, which was recently approved by City Council and which will be managed by the Cleveland Foundation, aims to “reclaim” thousands of acres of idled sites across Cleveland—those that were abandoned when companies fled to the suburbs—for mostly manufacturing jobs. Recent benefactors include the abandoned Wellman-Seaver-Morgan plant site located in Central, Cleveland.com reported in April.

A large swath of development on Cleveland land tends to run up against conflicts caused by what was previously on the land.

You see that conflict with the Carriage Works Building on West 25th in Ohio City (which got hundreds of thousands in brownfield grant money last year), an artist’s space in an old foundry building in Central, or building apartments on the western half of the Scranton Peninsula. State or federal dollars to clean up decades of pollution often make or break projects at large scale.

It’s there with Bedrock’s massive redevelopment of the northern bank of the Cuyahoga River, where bulkheads have to be fortified as ground is excavated and prepped for building foundations and new water lines.

A recent creation, and okay from City Council, gave Bedrock its own special tax-increment financing district, which means the multi-billion-dollar Detroit company will throw money into a public improvement fund in lieu of typical property tax payments.

The Cleveland Clinic Global Peak Performance Center, the flashy Cavs training facility in the Flats South part of Downtown, will be the first piece of the puzzle to open with construction slated to begin in the fall.

This article appears in Jul 31 – Aug 13, 2024.