Another Skyscraper Planned for University Circle Moves Ahead

This article was published through an exclusive content-sharing agreement with neo-trans.blog.

There’s good news and there’s uncertain news when it comes to the latest skyscraper planned for Cleveland’s booming cultural district, University Circle, and specifically for the megaproject site called Circle Square.

The good news is that the City Planning Commission’s Design Review Committee gave its final approval to designs for a 24-story, 281-unit, for-rent apartment tower dubbed East Stokes.

It is planned to fill half of a block on Chester Avenue between Stokes Boulevard and Martin Luther King (MLK) Jr. Drive. The skyscraper’s ground floor will have 17,000 square feet of retail space. Above that will be a roughly 300-space parking garage, to be hidden someday by a phase 1B offering of up to five for-sale townhomes along MLK.

The uncertainty is when construction might start. This skyscraper’s design has already been refined to reduce its costs and enhance its potential revenues to make its numbers work better. But whether they will work well enough remains to be seen.

“To be determined,” said Steve Rubin, vice president of developer UC City Center LLC, in response to questions from Planning Commission members about a groundbreaking. “It will either be spring of 2026 or 27 depending on a variety of factors that have to do with dollars and cents — the buyouts.”

In construction, the buyout process is where a general contractor locks in prices for materials and subcontractor services by finalizing agreements with subcontractors, suppliers and vendors. This step ensures that all necessary materials, labor and services are secured, typically at the most cost-effective rates.

In an e-mail to NEOtrans, Rubin added that nailing down financing for the skyscraper is also yet to be finalized. But he said that the commission’s vote today will help the development team address those uncertainties.

“Now that we have the approvals, we’re going to start on that and see where it takes us,” Rubin said. “This is a passion project for us.”

UC City Center is a company created by Cleveland-based Midwest Development Partners (MDP) to help plan for and deliver the 4.5-acre Circle Square district. It is working in partnership with PCP Voyager, also based in Cleveland, on the project. NEOtrans was first to reveal the East Stokes skyscraper.

The same developers along with general contractor Power Construction of Chicago built the 24-story Artisan next door. Power Construction will also build East Stokes. A year after opening in June 2023, The Artisan reached 90 percent occupancy.

The multi-structure Circle Square district is roughly bounded by Euclid Avenue, East 105th Street, Chester and MLK. Stokes Boulevard divides the development in half.

In addition to The Artisan, University Circle’s tallest tower, the Circle Square development team has also built a public parking garage and the nine-story Library Lofts over the new two-story MLK Branch Library since 2021.

“It’s extraordinary what’s changed in just a short amount of time,” said Planning Commission Chair Lillian Kuri. “I think that big move you guys made at the beginning on the streets that allowed for more developable land and then closed (the distance of) these (cross)walks along what was just a spaghetti mess of traffic. People couldn’t cross.”

Gently curved turning lanes from Chester eastbound to MLK southbound were removed last year and streets are being narrowed to free up more developable land, slow down traffic and make the area safer for pedestrians and cyclists.

In response to community interest, the developers said they will retain as many of the Liberty Oaks as possible along the east and south sides of the East Stokes block. The Liberty Oaks were planted by the American Legion until 1924 in honor of those who gave their lives in World War I.

Plans are to make Stokes Boulevard into a retail street, with shops and restaurants on the ground-floor of buildings, not just the East Stokes apartment tower. A section of retail is also planned on the west side of Stokes, extending south from The Artisan’s retail space.

That expanded retail is to be topped by parking and a hotel — but there is no timetable for that work. No plans have been submitted to the city for completing the West Stokes block. But the east block will add a significant amount of retail.

“The type of retail we’ve always advocated for this location is a combination of food and amenity retail — so bank branch, dry cleaner, the day-to-day errands that you want to do, together with at least one bistro-type of restaurant and some ethnic foods,” Rubin explained.

“We originally planned on doing a grocery store here but with Meijer’s opening up a couple blocks away — we dropped that plan and we’re looking at other anchors for this area that are additive and hopefully support Meijer,” he added.

Plans for the tower also show its lobby will be the at the northeast corner, at Chester and MLK. South of the lobby on the MLK side, up to five townhouses are planned but are not a part of this phase.

“They will be a for-sale product versus the apartments that will be rental,” said project architect Nolan Sit of Solomon Cordwell Buenz (SCB) of Seattle. “So we didn’t want that financing to interfere with the construction of the tower.”

After both the apartment tower and townhomes are complete, a phase two of East Stokes will be considered. It will extend the structured parking garage southward toward where the old traffic circle was that gave University Circle its name.

Above the East Stokes parking garage, an office building will be built whenever the office market improves, Rubin said. There is no leasable class A or trophy-class office space between downtown Cleveland the East submarket along Interstate 271.

Apartments will range in size from a 590-square-foot studio to a 2,400-square-foot, three-bedroom suite near the top of the building. Each room in each apartment will have a window that opens like an awning.

Rental rates are not yet known but might be comparable to those at the equally tall Artisan across Stokes. In East Stokes, there will also be a group of 2,000-square-foot, three-bedroom apartments at the lower floors of the building.

“We like that because it’s closer to the park,” Sit said. “You have a more intimate view of that (Wade Park) Lagoon. We expect a lot of families to live here.”

The rooftop amenity space will be two levels tall with indoor and outdoor community spaces including hot tub, cold plunge pool, swimming pool, patios, grilling counters and fire pits.

From the very top floor to the next level down will have outdoor, wide, slip-resistant Mondo steps with social lounge spaces on either side of steps.

“Staff is very excited and supportive of the project,” said City Planning Director Calley Mersmann. “We really appreciate the attention to detail and thoughtfulness of the design.”

“We’re excited about completing this end of the block,” Sit added. “I think the retail will really start to take off when you have it on both ends (of the development). I think, in total, you’ll have about a thousand units spread across these four blocks.”

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