Mark Oprea
Ward 13 Councilman Kris Harsh at a listening session for Memphis & Pearl in December. Harsh was a central force behind getting the mixed-use project $2.5 million in public funding.
On Monday, City Council approved legislation that will fund $2.5 million of the construction gap financing. Council's handout follows County Council's choice on July 6th to throw $250,000 at the project, due to Memphis & Pearl's promise of creating 237 jobs.
Both a means to preserve the defunct St. Luke's church and form a sort of town center on the desolate corner of Pearl Road and Memphis Ave., Memphis & Pearl is designed to be brick, white and black-colored mid-rise, with 80 market-rate apartment units and 19,400 square feet of retail space. When all said and done, it'll cost $31 million.
And, according to Ward 13 Councilman Kris Harsh, whose ward includes Old Brooklyn, Memphis & Pearl represents an expansion of shiny new mid-rises to the neighborhoods untouched by it.
"Cleveland needs to embrace the concept that people can move [to Old Brooklyn] from other areas," Harsh told Scene. "I think this will be attractive to a lot of people that work in the hospitals, that work in professional capacities, people that live or work in the city but don't live here."
Harsh, along with members of Old Brooklyn's Community Development Corporation, have stressed the involvement of locals, it seems, through every step pre-build. In December, Harsh and Lucas Reeve, OBCDC's chief, led a community survey of about 250: The site not only needed to have something, but have something for the community, they heard.
In May, OBCDC led another survey, which seemed to echo the call of the original cohort. "Bring new business" was the winning reason, survey respondents said, to welcome Memphis & Peal developers Desmone to the neighborhood. People noted they wanted restaurant or a brewery to be included.
"I think it seems like the market is moving more towards a tap room than it is a brewery," said Reeve, laughing. "It would require a significant investment to [put a brewery] in the St. Luke's Church."
A taproom could be promising. After all, as Reeve confirmed, there's been no commercial development near the intersection in 2023. Eight apartments are bound to go up around the corner on Broadview, but that's it for the time being.
Maybe, Reeve said, $31 million could change that.
"Being able to address that need for multifamily housing, knowing the demand that we have out there, and to be able to meet the [demand], being that it's market rate and modern, replacing this multi-decades-old product," he said. "That's going to be huge for the neighborhood."
Designs for Memphis & Pearl will head for a look over at Near West Design Review this month. Construction, Reeve said, won't begin until "fall of 2024" at the earliest.
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