Cleveland City Council Committee Approves Zoning Change for Vacant Madison Ave. CVS Site After Hours of Contentious Debate

Khalid Bahhur, the former Cleveland airport commissioner and semi-retired consultant, spoke in favor of a zoning change that would allow a gas station to be built in the middle of Madison Avenue. Credit: Mark Oprea

A zoning change that would allow a gas station to be built at a vacant CVS site in Cudell was approved by Cleveland City Council’s Development, Planning & Sustainability Committee after two hours of back-and-forth debate Tuesday morning.

The site, a parking lot and abandoned building situated at 10022 Madison Avenue, is now one notch closer to being considered General Retail, a zoning designation that is more open to various types of business.

And the ordinance approved by the committee on a 5-1 vote could also get rid of the site’s Pedestrian Retail Overlay, attributed in the past by the Cleveland Planning Commission to encourage types of development more amenable to foot traffic than, say, one directly tied to refueling cars.

That binary alone—10022 being prepped for a more walkable Cleveland or one reliant on the status quo—was the source of frustration for a full house of public commenters on Tuesday including neighbors of Cudell and Detroit Shoreway that felt Council’s thumbs up of that zoning change was the levee break needed for carmageddon in the center of Cudell.

“But mainly, the priority is the safety of our children,” Sue Zimmerman, a nearby resident, told Council on Tuesday. “Kids pass by there on the their way to the park, to the recreation area, the school. We already have two convenience stores within walking distance. We have 15 gas stations within two miles!”

“We are a historic district,” Zimmerman added. “Electric vehicle chargers and cappuccino machines don’t belong here.”

But to entrepreneurs Amean Mohammad and Ibrahim Shehadeh, they do.

As do, according to plans submitted to the Board of Zoning Appeals last July, a bank, a pizza place and a full-service Shell with four gas pumps.

It’s the plans that Samir Mohammad, an agent of Shaker Madison, the limited liability company that bought the site for $575,000 last January, brought to contest a zoning change denial on July 16.

The now vacant CVS at 10022 Madison Avenue in 2023. A developer wants to build a Shell gas station there, a move that some residents feel is against the pedestrian aspirations of the block. Credit: Google

BZA would deny Shaker Madison’s request for a zoning change that would allow them to build their gas station complex for similar reasons nearby residents were citing: the vacant CVS should ideally be something else, something not involving underground fuel tanks.

An obstacle Shaker Madison wouldn’t take easily.

“We’re going to take a look at revising some of the zoning code—because it is obsolete,” Samir Mohammad told BZA in that July meeting. “Current gas stations really are today’s corner stores. I mean, this has been sitting vacant, with no takers, for the past two-and-a-half years.”

Just as Kelly expressed to Scene last year, his impetus for proposing the ordinance council approved on Tuesday rests in an urgent proposition: let’s occupy what is a dangerous abandoned site before it becomes more of a nuisance.

10022 is a haven for squatters and drug dealers, Kelly has long argued. More than 100 911 calls have been made in connection to the site between September 2022 to August 2024, police data shared by Kelly after the meeting showed—from accusations of felonious assault to vandalism.

“This whole thing has become passionate. It’s become heated,” Kelly told the room on Tuesday. “But this, overall, is about a vacant, unoccupied building.”

“Once again,” he added, “my residents elected me to do a job. Not keep it.”

Councilmembers hesitant or downright opposed to Kelly’s ordinance based their criticisms of the change either in the shiftiness of spot-zoning—making laws a lá carte for buildings—or in the possible tampering with democracy.

Ward 15 Councilwoman Jenny Spencer, the only councilperson to vote no on the ordinance, felt like expanding the uses for 10022 could open it up to something more degrading to Madison Ave. than a Shell. To an auto repair shop! To a car dealer! To a strip club!

“That is a level of risk I am not personally comfortable with,” Spencer said.

Several councilmembers hinted at 10022 becoming the future replacement for the Fire Department’s Station 23, which currently sits down the road off West 99th and Madison, and which is in need of repair.

No official plans for a new fire station have yet been submitted, Ward 3 Councilman Kerry McCormack noted. Building a new station, which could clock $3 to $4 million, would also require—ironically—a reconfiguration of the streetscape around the building, McCormack pointed out.

Which would, he said, take care of some safety concerns.

“I mean, that’s our job,” he said. “Not a homeowner’s job. That’s not a business’ job. It’s the city’s job to keep our curbs safe—so let’s just clarify that.”

Although no gas station or fire station have been confirmed, Shaker Madison’s plans will head to Design Review sometime this year. If okayed, it will go to the City Planning Commission after.