Massive Unified Operations Center Is Planned for Cleveland Clinic

A development partnership plans to build for Cleveland Clinic a massive Unified Operations Center for 526 new and relocated jobs. The relocated jobs will come from other Clinic facilities in Northeast Ohio to the 111-acre former Ford Stamping Plant in Walton Hills, according to public records.

The Unified Operations Center will be a new, 600,000-square-foot facility on 46.6 acres of land at 7845 Northfield Rd. for the Clinic and two of its partners as tenants. The Walton Hills Village Council is considering passing a Community Reinvestment Area (CRA) tax-exemption agreement with the partnership that would build it.

Construction of the $142 million center is due to take 26 months, ending in late 2028. Functions of the Unified Operation Center are "maintenance, cleaning, and sterilization of medical equipment and distribution to business locations around the region, and pharmacy services," the agreement notes.

Council members held an executive session meeting July 15 to discuss the CRA agreement in private. The agreement would be with DROF WH#3, LLC, which is a development partnership of Weston Inc. of Warrensville Heights, DiGeronimo Companies of Brecksville, and Scannell Properties of Indianapolis.

"The proposed Unified Operations Center will be operated by Cleveland Clinic and is intended to centralize certain essential non-clinical operational functions serving the Ohio market," the agreement read.

"The facility is proposed to include, without limitation, sterile processing operations, pharmacy services, distribution functions, and centralized equipment storage and repair services," it continued. 

The CRA agreement also describes in detail where the 381 relocated full- and part-time jobs would come from, listing each existing Cleveland Clinic facility in Northeast Ohio and the number of jobs moved from it.

According to the agreement, the biggest losers would be the Clinic's Administrative Campus on Science Park Drive in Beachwood, its Business Operations Center on Brecksville Road in Independence, and its Main Campus near University Circle in Cleveland.

From the Beachwood Administration Campus would come 114 jobs representing $10.24 million in annual payroll. The Independence Operations Center would lose 66 jobs and $5.6 million in payroll.

Cleveland's Main Campus would lose 57 jobs and $6.4 million in payroll, with another 20 jobs moved from another Clinic facility in Cleveland -- Fairview Hospital, representing $1 million more in payroll, per the CRA agreement.

Cleveland City Council President Blaine Griffin, who has the Clinic's fast-growing Main Campus in his Sixth Ward, said he was just hearing about the Walton Hills project and would have no comment until he got more information about it.

Mayors Justin Berns of Beachwood and Gregory Kurtz of Independence did not respond to emails from NEOtrans prior to publication of this article. This article will be updated if and when they respond.

The project is also expected to generate up to 145 additional jobs and $3.2 million in payroll at the site, with hiring projected from 2027 through 2035. Of that, 90 new jobs are forecast from the Clinic's two partners, described in the agreement only as a "third-party logistics partner" and a "sterile equipment processing vendor."

NEOtrans secured a copy of the 39-page CRA agreement from the village's records posted online. Cleveland Clinic's Senior Director of Corporate Communications Angela Smith said she had no information to share about the project.

The managing member of DROF WH#3 is TJ Asher, Weston's president of acquisitions and development. He and Walton Hills Mayor Don Kolograf did not respond to NEOtrans' inquiries. 

Asher signed an application to the village June 8, seeking a 75-percent, 15-year tax exemption covering improvements to real property totaling $142 million of new construction, site improvements, machinery, equipment, supplies and instrumentation.

"This project represents a major investment to consolidate operations to reduce operating costs while upgrading its operations with technological advances in healthcare today and in the future," Asher wrote in the application.

"Cleveland Clinic and its service providers plan to develop an advanced technology operations center which sets the standard for healthcare automation and be a magnet for other healthcare institutions, worldwide, to visit and witness firsthand what leading-edge healthcare services look like," he added.

Asher also stated the Walton Hills site attracted Cleveland Clinic's attention because it was shovel-ready, well located within its hospital service area, and is near major highways.

"Just as importantly, the site offers an opportunity to reduce operating expenses in the form of real estate tax abatement," he continued. "This abatement is a significant cost reduction factor and a major factor in determining the appropriateness of this site for its operations."

The site is immediately north of the Northfield Park Racino and the boundary between Cuyahoga and Summit counties. Immediately to the north of the site where the Unified Operations Center will rise is a roughly 20-acre piece of vacant land for possible expansion or other development.

North of that are the 249,000-square-foot Cardinal Health distribution center and the 247,000-square-foot Great Day Improvements warehouse. Those were the first two structures in the Forward Innovation Center -- the name of the redevelopment of the former Ford Stamping Plant.

The 2.1-million-square-foot Ford plant was built in 1954 to manufacture stamped body parts for cars -- hoods, roofs and bumpers. It peaked at 5,000 workers in the early 1960s, declined to only 1,000 workers in the early 2000s and closed in 2015. 

Another Ford plant, in Brook Park, was acquired by the same development partnership, which later sold 176 acres of it to an affiliate of the Haslam Sports Group.

The Haslams acquired it to build the new Huntington Bank Field for the Cleveland Browns and other sports and entertainment uses. NEOtrans broke the story on the land deal and the Browns' pending move to Brook Park.

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