Cleveland’s Next Big Manufacturing Plant is Moving Forward in Slavic Village

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With tenants in mind and a locally resurgent manufacturing market behind it, the long-proposed Gateway 55 light-industrial development is moving forward in the northern part of Slavic Village on Cleveland’s near-East Side.

According to the city’s Web-based permit portal, plans were submitted last week to the City of Cleveland’s Building Department for a multi-tenant, single-story, 166,000-square-foot big-box structure at 3000 E. 55th St., just south of the Opportunity Corridor Boulevard.

The development is described in public records as a “multi-tenant industrial building with warehouse, production and office space.” Submitting the plans were Premier Development Partners of Independence and its architect Richard L. Bowen & Associates of Cleveland.

The structure is a build-to-suit development whose size was requested by its potential end-users. Originally, Premier had marketed the 15-acre site as being able to accommodate a structure as large as 250,000 square feet.

While not part of the city’s 350-acre Midline Priority Investment Area, it is nearby and, according to Premier’s President and Founding Member Spencer Pisczak, Gateway 55 follows in the spirit of that effort to assemble, clear and reactivate fallow industrial land.

“It definitely fits that approach,” Pisczak said. “The (Gateway 55) project is a combination of manufacturing, assembly and distribution. But I cannot reveal the tenants at this time.”

Cost of the development was not available. A placeholder amount of only $2 million was publicly listed in the building department application.

The actual cost will likely be in the tens of millions of dollars based on other, similar projects in the region. Among them is the nearby Nor-Am Cold Storage facility, 2797 E. 75th St. Cost of building that 156,000-square-foot frozen food distribution hub in 2024 was $50 million.

Premier took title to the land for Gateway 55 in 2022. It was comprised of several parcels, each having separate owners. Those properties were combined into a single, large parcel.

Sweeney Avenue between East 55th and East 51st street was vacated and its public right of way absorbed into land owned by Premier’s affiliate Reserve Premier LLC.

But the rare cobblestone-paved street remains in place for now. It was once surrounded by Gilded Age manufacturing plants to the north and the former Erie Railroad Von Wilier Yard locomotive roundhouse and repair shops to the south.

As the aging industries closed in the 1960s-90s, they sat underutilized ever since or became less attractive uses like junkyards. Clearing them and repurposing them for modern industries and employers has been a long time in coming.

Pisczak said that, based on the resurgence of manufacturing locally, if they didn’t have tenants in mind, his firm would probably have built Gateway 55 anyway on speculation that an end-user would come along.

“All of our manufacturing tenants in this area are doing very well,” he said. “We have more than 100 manufacturing tenants in Northeast Ohio.”

In 2021, the city entered into agreements with Reserve for a 100-percent, 30-year property tax abatement for site improvements and a chain-of-title deal to secure non-school tax-increment financing to help develop the site.

Improvements included demolishing and remediating several active and abandoned structures, including for Tyroler Scrap Metals, Inc., Finish Line Binderies/BindTech and the Black Lion Tire Co.

All of the buildings’ foundation were removed, and the entire site was cleared of various debris, vegetation, leveled and graded. Premier touted the land as the only construction-ready site along the Opportunity Corridor.

The firm is also touting the transportation access to and from the site for materials, products and labor. Not only is the site just south of the Opportunity Corridor, it is next to Interstates 490 and 77.

And it’s just a 1,000-foot walk from the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority’s (GCRTA) East 55th Station which is served by all three of GCRTA’s light-rail lines.

In the other direction is a Norfolk Southern-owned freight track that is serviced by the industrial switching short-line railroad company OmniTRAX that can ship bulk materials and finished goods.

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