Clark-Fulton's Largest Vacant Building to Be New Home for Cleveland Public Health Community Center

A rendering of what the $30 million of the Blanket Mills building, what was once the Clark-Fulton neighborhood’s largest empty structure, will look like when construction wraps up later this year. Credit: Levin Group

Ohio City’s longest-running, city-owned health clinic is ready to make its move southward.

The McCafferty Center of the Cleveland Department of Public Health is officially lined up to move into the Blanket Mills complex off St. Rocco’s Court in Clark-Fulton, the City Planning Commission okayed last week and City Council approved on Monday.

Public Health Director Dave Margolius painted the move as a logical win-win, both for Ohio City and Clark-Fulton. While Ohio City is scoring a new senior apartment complex to add to a changing Lorain Avenue, its neighbor to the south is being bolstered with community health services as well as 60 new affordable rental units.

“Clark-Fulton has MetroHealth, it has Neighborhood Family Progress,” Margolius told Scene in a call. “But there’s a whole big part of that neighborhood that was missing access—access to STI screening, birth control.”

Ideal at a place like Blanket Mills, Margolius said.

Earlier this month, what was once the largest vacant building in Clark-Fulton was hosting new wall framing and plumbing stacks on its first floor, where the soon-to-be-named McCafferty replacement will open.

It will open amongst a kind of cluster for the public good: Neighborhood Family Practice, Metrowest and the Spanish-American Committee will all open up offices or clinic space on Blanket Mills’ first floor come 2026.

That red-brick building at 3466 St. Rocco’s has sat vacant since 2008. Over the past decade, the project to revitalize what used to house horse-blanket manufacturing collected help from the city, county and state, in the form of tax credits or a $1 million loan.

On Tuesday, County Council voted to approve a $250,000 to help finish the $30 million rehab.

Which, Margolius said, may be all the more needed when McCafferty reopens (under a new name) later this year, or in early 2026.

The looming cuts to Medicaid Expansion in Ohio, combined with the increase in medical costs due to Trump’s tariffs could lead to a domino effect on Cleveland’s healthcare industry.

Medicaid patients typically approved at MetroHealth or University Hospitals will seek more affordable screenings or check-ups at city-run clinics like McCafferty. That could mean its ten-person staff growing bigger, as well.

“Those cuts proposed would take us back 20 years,” Margolius said. And “it would just make us a lot busier.”

The Cleveland Department of Health is planning to move out of its space on Lorain Avenue later this year.

Demolition for McCafferty is slated, Margolius said, for Spring 2026.