Rose Building to Rekindle Front Door of Cleveland Identity With Boutique Marriott Hotel

A fine-dining restaurant and a “signature” bar will occupy the first floor of the Rose Building’s next act: Marriott’s first boutique hotel combined with multi-family apartments. Credit: Mark Oprea

It was once aptly called the hub of Downtown Cleveland.

By the late 1920s, the Rose Building on East 9th and Prospect had rightfully earned its reputation as the “New Center.” Seven-thousand workers walked in daily. Two-thousand pedestrians passed by its bronze doors, as did eight streetcar lines, 12 bus lines and some 32,000 cars.

“The Rose Building stands at the hub of this great circle of buying power,” an ad from 1929 reads, “radiating in six directions, and making [it] accessible from every part of down-town Cleveland.”

Today, that’s not the case. Since Medical Mutual fled its headquarters it occupieed since 1984, the building remains a stilted shell. Its ground floor, with its beige Formica tables and silver microwaves, appears suspended in time—the ghost of Medical Mutual cafeteria past.

A sad excuse for a hub.

Bhavin Patel is placing a bet that he and his development firm, Spark GHC, can change that. In mid-December, Patel and his co-founders secured ownership of the Rose Building, following nearly a year-and-a-half of preparation and due diligence. And since then, $35 million has been invested in the building’s foundation.

Patel’s bet revolves around what he’s selling as a new concept: the country’s first amalgamation of Marriott’s boutique Tribute brand of hotels and nine floors of downtown luxury apartments. With management and amenities—a gym, housekeeping, laundry—all under the same umbrella. Project Scarlet, the codename for the renovation, will be, its website reads, “the first joint multi-family and hospitality development in the United States.”

A legacy project, Patel told Scene on a recent tour, that could help re-energize, along with nearby retail, the front door of Downtown’s Gateway District.

“We hope this is the gateway to the city,” Patel said, walking around the former Medical Mutual cafeteria on Monday.

“We want people to stop in, grab a drink, grab a bite here at the restaurant or, you know, interact with us,” he added. “If they’re in town for more than a couple of days, they can stay with us for one day to a month in the hotel side. And use the apartments as their permanent residences.”

Spark GHC’s optimism, with construction set to start in August, pairs with Downtown’s ongoing development spike.

The Fidelity Hotel opened its doors late last year, vying for a small resurgence of the bygone Short Vincent district. Construction wrapped up at Skyline 776, The Bell on East 9th, the Hotel Cleveland at Public Square and began at the Electric Building on Huron.

And on Monday, funding was secured for the $218 million renovation of Erieview Tower into apartments and an upscale W Hotel, NEOtrans reported.

Bhavin Patel, one of the co-founders of Spark GHC, is hoping the Marriott Tribute brand can help reawaken what used to be Cleveland’s front door. Credit: Mark Oprea

But something about the Rose Building’s third act seems different. Something about the promise of its higher-than-usual front windows, its bronze frieze, its primetime views of Progressive Field.

And of course no longer having that front door be totally, achingly vacant. A high-end restaurant concept is in the brainstorming process, Patel said, by Arrival, the marketing firm behind Red Bull’s “gives you wiiiings” slogan. And a quarter of the ground floor will be dedicated to a lengthy, horizontal bar, which will include sidewalk seating during the warm months.

“Whatever we end up putting there—it’s really gonna reactivate that whole block,” Joe Berardi, the project’s head architect, said. “I remember one of our first meetings in that cafeteria. I was like, ‘Guys, this is the perfect spot for a bar or restaurant. And they’re like, ‘Yeah, that’s exactly it.’”

As for specifics about how exactly a luxury hotel would mingle with 154 apartments, Patel kept his predictions conceptual. Your 700-square-foot one-bedroom would run, he suggested, roughly $1,680 a month. Your average king room at other Tribute hotels, like The Kinley in Downtown Cincinnati, run for a pricey $325 a night. (With a steep $46 valet to boot.)

But this isn’t the Downtown Hampton Inn, or the Courtyard Beachwood, two other properties in the Spark GHC portfolio. Patel, who grew up in Tallmadge and entered the family motel business at 20, spoke with the energetic verve of a prodigal son high on hometown pride.

“We want people to live here, interact, and bring this corner back to life,” he said. “And I think it’s such an important corner for the city. It’s in the middle of everything.”