Bedrock Looks To Expand Riverfront Holdings

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

While public records show Bedrock Real Estate is buying more Downtown Cleveland land along the Cuyahoga River, so far only rumors give any indications as to why. Interestingly, the targeted property is not included in Bedrock’s $3.5 billion Riverfront development masterplan. Then again, neither is the rumored land use.

Rocket Close, a title company that’s under billionaire Dan Gilbert’s Rock Ventures umbrella, received a certificate of disclosure this week that it had requested from the city’s Building Department to learn more about the history of a 1.9-acre property at 401 Stones Levee Rd. in the so-called Flats South district.

An application for the certificate indicates the buyer is Starling Stone LLC, an affiliate of Bedrock and has the same Detroit address as Bedrock. In 2023, Starling Stone bought the neighboring property, a 2.2-acre parcel at 1900 – 1960 W. 3rd St., for $2.8 million, according to Cuyahoga County property records.

No deed transfer or other sale-related documents have yet been recorded by the county, so it’s possible the transaction hasn’t yet closed. Lora Brand, vice president of communications at Bedrock hasn’t yet responded to an e-mail from NEOtrans seeking confirmation of the transaction or offered a reason why Bedrock wants the land.

Rico Pietro, a principal at real estate brokerage Cushman & Wakefield-CRESCO in Independence, represented the seller — Flats South Cleveland LLC, an affiliate of Beachwood-based developer Joel Scheer. Pietro said Bedrock didn’t tell him what they planned to do with the property.

“They came in and made a fair offer and that was that,” he said.

A rumor shared by two sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity, however, suggested that the past may be prologue here. The rumor is that a live performance venue is planned on the riverfront and this may be the site for it.

From 2001-11, the 5,000-seat Tower City Amphitheater hosted live musical performances nearby at 1887 W. 3rd, on the other side of Stones Levee. It was under cover of a semi-permanent shelter using a reinforced fabric membrane structure.

But back then, nothing else was nearby except parking lots and under-utilized industrial buildings. That’s changing. Rising on the site of the amphitheater is the Cleveland Clinic Global Peak Performance Center that will include the Cleveland Cavaliers’ practice facility. Construction should be completed next year.

The street on which the property acquisition is located will soon be directly connected to Downtown Cleveland and the Gateway District by a restored Eagle Avenue ramp. However, the long-abandoned Eagle Avenue lift bridge over the Cuyahoga River is being demolished.

The Tower City Amphitheater was dismantled in April 2012 to make way for employee parking for the then-Horseshoe Casino Cleveland (now JACK Cleveland Casino) which opened in May 2012. The amphitheater competed with the 4,153-seat Jacobs Pavilion farther down the river for booking acts.

Starling Stone’s 4.1-acre site — with the latest property acquisition included — would be large enough and then some to accommodate a venue of approximately the same size as the Tower City Amphitheater which had a roughly 40,000-square-foot footprint.

That would leave several acres for more than 300 close-in parking spaces. Hundreds more parking spaces exist nearby, including those for the Global Peak Performance Center which likely will not be very active on summer evenings and weekends.

Nic Barlage, CEO of Rock Entertainment Group which is also in Rock Ventures’ tent, recently teased the pending addition of at least one other entertainment venue coming to Bedrock’s acreage. That 38-acre (soon to be 40-acre) swath stretches from the Rock Block to the Riverfront.

“We’re working on a couple of other venues that will soon to be announced here in this quarter hopefully that will push us over five million (annual) visitors in aggregate into our neighborhood,” Barlage said.

Bedrock announced yesterday it is converting the Skylight Concourse at Tower City Center into an event center. It is removing the park-like settings called Skylight Park it installed in there nearly four years ago along with the shuttered fountain below it.

Yet another venue is planned as part of a $500 million Rock And Roll Land 17-story hotel atop a theater, proposed to rise along Huron Road west of Ontario Street — on the other side of Collision Bend in the Cuyahoga River. But Bedrock has already announced that project.

Located next door to the Bedrock’s latest property acquisition is Cleveland Whiskey, 601 Stones Levee. Cleveland Whiskey CEO Tom Lix is more than just an interested party to whatever may happen here.

He said he’d heard rumors that Bedrock was buying more land but hasn’t heard anything about why. He has invested a lot of money fixing up historic buildings at 601 Stones Levee for his distillery and has plans to open a riverside restaurant here, too.

“I would love it if they did” open an amphitheater here, he said.

A certificate of disclosure is often requested by a buyer’s title company to learn if the subject property has any pending city building code or lead hazard violations, if any structures on its land are condemned, if the site is in an historic district and what is the legally authorized use of the property.

The office-warehouse property has no pending violations, the certificate shows. Neither of its two buildings — a 22,338-square-foot structure built in 1916 or its 14,100-square-foot building constructed in 1963 — have ever been condemned. The land and structures are used as a rental property.

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