Cleveland Clinic’s Next Expansion Starts To Take Shape

By this time next year, after the Cleveland Clinic’s largest-ever building is due to open with 2,000 additional employees, there should be a lot more clarity that’s publicly available on Ohio’s largest employer’s next expansive plans for its Main Campus near Cleveland’s University Circle.

But even with the preliminary concepts now emerging, it’s apparent that the Clinic’s intentions are to build even bigger than it has in its latest round of construction that put four construction cranes over the Main Campus at the same time two years ago.

That round brought a $1.1 billion, 1-million-square-foot Neurological Institute, two Innovation District buildings adding 290,000 square feet, a 130,000-square-foot expansion and renovation of the Cole Eye Institute, plus 45,000 square feet of remodeled lab space at the Lerner Research Institute.

But, wait, there’s more!

According to three sources who spoke to NEOTrans on the condition of anonymity, the next round of Main Campus development has advanced far enough to where the Clinic is assembling properties and meeting with potential general contractors regarding future bidding for these new facilities.

Most of the Clinic’s media relations and newsroom staff were out of the office until next week and not immediately available to respond to inquiries from NEOtrans for more details. Fairfax Renaissance Development Corp. Executive Director Denise VanLeer also did not respond prior to publication of this article.

“They’re looking at some major investments,” City Council President Blaine Griffin told NEOtrans. Much of the Clinic’s Main Campus is in his Ward 6. “I’m familiar with some of the general concepts but not the specifics. But I was told to be on the lookout for some major investments.”

NEOtrans has learned the Clinic’s plans include a new hotel, research lab facilities, a new impatient care bed tower and possibly other caregiving towers, some of which is associated with the planned expansion and upgrade of the Emergency Center, 9105 Cedar Ave., into a desired Level I trauma center.

Ten days ago, the Clinic secured a $50 million grant from the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Supporting Foundation toward its development of the trauma center. That has opened the door for the Clinic to pursue expanding its follow-on care offerings.

The Clinic is developing plans for significantly more space for additional inpatient care and recovery areas, with more modern, private rooms, plus specialized care units such as new intensive care facilities.

That first new bed tower is planned to replace the existing, 4.5-star-rated, luxury InterContinental Cleveland Hotel by IHG, 9801 Carnegie Ave. This is not to be confused with the InterContinental Suites Hotel, 8800 Euclid Ave., that is being renovated and converted into a new IHG brand, voco Suites.

It could be the second time the Clinic demolishes a large, 25-year-old hotel at this site. The InterContinental Hotel was built here in 2003 where the former Omni Hotel, a 17-story building was constructed in 1974 and razed in 1999.

To make way for this development, a newly built InterContinental Hotel will constructed at another location. That location has not yet been finalized. But the sources said a potential site is east of the Sheila and Eric Samson Pavilion medical school, 9501 Euclid.

In the block just east of it, bounded by Euclid and Chester avenues, plus East 100th and 101st streets, are three smallish buildings. One is a closed Rite-Aid drugstore on Clinic-owned land. Another is an historic, 96-year-old United States Post Office University Center Station.

The third is the largest structure in that block — the 1998-built, United Cerebral Palsy-Wolstein Center, 10011 Euclid, measuring 41,238 square feet. It remains to be seen if the Clinic will work around any of those buildings, demolish everything, or opt for another site.

If they did go for another location, a site on East 105th Street may be highly desirable to give it more visibility and access to the Opportunity Corridor Boulevard and put it within walking distance of restaurants and amenities of University Circle.

What is more certain is the desired setting for a large structure enclosing advanced research laboratories, offices, meeting rooms and probably a café. That site is the southeast corner of the Opportunity Corridor and East 79th Street.

While the Opportunity Corridor has become a setting for growing businesses in the food industry, it is also gaining health-related employers too. Reese Consumer Health is planning a new office and warehouse facility just off the corridor at 10101 Woodland Ave.

The Cleveland Clinic and the city’s Department of Economic Development are finalizing the details on land assembly, as the OC-East 79th site involves dozens of parcels on which as many single-family homes once stood.

The city, the Ohio Department of Transportation and The Zone LLC, a real estate arm of the Burten Bell Carr Development Inc., owns those parcels. Also, several public rights of way for streets and alleys are to be vacated and absorbed into the plat of the assembled site, the three sources said.

Back in the heart of the Main Campus, the sources said that at least one, possibly two more large medical structures are planned. They are for the provision of care services and not for hotels or other ancillary Clinic uses. Further details were not available.

But given the increasingly crowded Main Campus, the Clinic has reportedly informed general contractors that it wants many of these new structures to be designed to be more vertical than horizonal — at least eight stories high for each.

Hints of major expansions at the Clinic came when the health care system announced plans for two huge new parking garages to be built on Clinic-owned surface parking lots. So far, NEOtrans is the only news media which has reported on these large new garages.

A nine-level, 1,500-car garage for patients and visitors is planned at the northeast corner of East 105th and Carnegie. It will have an enclosed pedestrian bridge over East 105th to the to the Taussig Cancer Center.

To the west, at Carnegie and East 86th Street, an eight-level, 2,500-car garage for Clinic employees is planned. It will have an enclosed walkway over 86th to the East 89th MM garage, the Clinic’s largest structure at 1.56 million square feet.

Design concepts for the two parking garages were presented for review and input in February at a Ward 6 meeting hosted Councilman Griffin and on March 26 at a Central East Design Review Community meeting.

The committee gave both structures conditional approval, but urged that the Clinic’s design team put more thought into how do the garages will affect traffic and pedestrian flows around them. The garages have yet to come before the City Planning Commission full design review committee.

For more updates about Cleveland, sign up for our Cleveland Magazine Daily newsletter, delivered to your inbox six times a week.

Cleveland Magazine is also available in print, featuring immersive stories, helpful guides and beautiful photography and design.