In Reviewing Proposed Lakewood Hospital Development Plan, City Offers Three Alternatives

The city of Lakewood is continuing to work with the Cleveland Clinic in the latter’s plans to replace Lakewood Hospital with a “family wellness campus.” This week, Lakewood Planning and Development Director Dru Siley submitted three alternatives to the Clinic’s proposed site plan (see right). 

At issue is all of the land currently owned by the Lakewood Hospital Association, which will come under city ownership when the hospital is demolished. In the photo, those properties are outlined in yellow, orange and red; they include residential homes, a parking garage, office space and the current hospital property. The future of those properties remains up in the air.

The city’s three alternatives can be seen below.

The family wellness campus clocks in at 62,000 square feet. The Clinic has proposed that it be aligned along Detroit Avenue (sort of in the footprint of the current hospital). The city has submitted two north-south orientations for the building (along Marlowe and Belle avenues) and another plan entirely that would see the two-story wellness campus built on the site of the Professional Office Building on the southwest corner of Belle and Detroit (labeled P.O.B. in the photo above.).

What each of these plans ends up with is several acres of space to be developed. There’s no word yet on what could go in there. Earlier this year, Mayor Michael Summers intimated that some rezoning for “commercial development” could take place in the area.

This article appears in Apr 1-7, 2015.