Rock Hall Buys Its Neighbor. Guardians Active at Deadline: CLE Daily

🌤️ 83°; Sunny

🏀 Name Game: The new WNBA franchise in Cleveland is set to announce its nickname this morning. The leading candidate is Sirens. If you recall, in their first version, back when the league started, they were called the Cleveland Rockers.

⚾️ Active Trade Deadline: The Guardians made three trades yesterday before the baseball trade deadline, adding All-Star left-handed pitcher Foster Griffin, first baseman Nathaniel Lowe and corner outfielder Jo Adell.

🚁 Special Delivery: Beachwood is launching a prescription-by-drone program with Cleveland Clinic and operator Zipline, flying weekday business hours. Residents are split between "how cool" and "buzzing overhead" — the city says more details land in early August. 

🕷️ Spidey Sense: "Spider-Man: Brand New Day" is swinging all over Northeast Ohio — Phoenix Theaters at Great Northern Mall is running 36 hours of nonstop screenings starting Thursday, and the Guardians handed out a Spider-Man bobblehead at Wednesday's game. 

ICYMI: The gold lion out front is gone. After a $546 million sale from MGM to Clairvest, the rebranded Northfield Park Racino threw its grand opening — 200 new video lottery machines, a steak-forward menu at Valley's Edge, Overtime Grill & Bar replacing Tap Sports Bar, and upgrades coming to the 1957 racetrack next door.

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Trivia Question

This industrialist and philanthropist, known as Cleveland’s first citizen, is buried at Lake View Cemetery, but his largest monument is floating in Lake Erie in Downtown Cleveland.

Development: The Rock Hall just bought its next-door neighbor..

By Ken Prendergast, NEO Trans

With no room left to grow, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame has quietly acquired the Harbor Verandas — the three-story apartment-and-retail building that hems in its eastern flank at 1050 E. 9th St. — locking up the last space it has to expand along Cleveland's lakefront. For now, nothing changes; the building stays in use, and the move is all about the long game.

• The Squeeze: Once the Rock Hall finishes its $150 million expansion to the west, which butts up against the Great Lakes Science Center, it's boxed in — Lake Erie's North Coast Harbor inlet to the north, Erieview Avenue to the south and Harbor Verandas just 60 feet to the east.

• The Deal: The Rock Hall bought the building and its 50-year Port of Cleveland ground lease from Beachwood developer TurnDev, which purchased it last year from Dick Pace's Cumberland Development and will now manage it for the museum. Terms weren't disclosed; the building cost about $14 million to build in 2018 and was appraised for taxes at $7.68 million.

• The Building: Harbor Verandas is a 50,000-square-foot property with 16 apartments over five ground-floor retail/office spaces and 29 heated indoor parking spots. Residential leases stay in place, and the Rock Hall says it wants to fill the ground floor — which includes a vacant restaurant and cafe — to draw people to the waterfront.

• The Long Game: A source told NEOtrans last year the Rock Hall eyed the site for an eventual conversion to offices, with a street-level presence on East 9th that people could visit without entering the museum. By comparison, the museum's new 50,000-square-foot wing is running about $3,000 a square foot — more than 10 times what Harbor Verandas cost to build.

Big Picture: With the Metroparks taking over North Coast Harbor and the Shoreway set to become a multimodal boulevard, the Rock Hall is positioning itself for whatever the lakefront becomes next.

Read the full story.

Talk of the Town

Max Miller says he's not going anywhere. The Rocky River congressman spent 18 minutes on X Sunday disputing domestic- and child-abuse allegations from his ex-wife, Emily Moreno, and said he'll stay in the race — days before the Aug. 5 deadline for Republicans to swap him off the November ballot.

A strike date at the library. Cleveland Public Library workers will walk off the job Aug. 24 unless SEIU District 1199 and management reach a deal, after eight-plus months of talks. Three bargaining sessions are scheduled before then. 

Free parking is over in Peninsula. The Cuyahoga Valley gateway village started charging for its 320 public spaces Monday, on-street and off. Payment runs through the PayByPhone app, which pings you before your time runs out and lets you extend without walking back to the car. 

A grant, and a longer wait, in Akron. Hope and Healing Survivor Resource Center landed a $600,000 Justice Department grant to address abuse of adults 50 and older — but two other applications were denied and five more are still pending. "We should've heard months ago," its chief development officer said.

Fracking bids in Ohio's only national forest. The Bureau of Land Management will auction 2,840 acres of Wayne National Forest for fracking on Sept. 15 — part of a broader 40,000-acre plan — with a public-comment period open through Aug. 17. 

Food & Drink: RED the Steakhouse is back on the Chagrin corridor. 

By Douglas Trattner

After closing its Pinecrest location earlier this year, RED the Steakhouse returns Thursday, Aug. 13, with a new home at Eton Chagrin Boulevard in Woodmere (28869 Chagrin Blvd.) — the spot owner Gregg Levy says the restaurant has wanted since the pandemic. "We are exactly where we want to be," he says.

• The Backstory: Last winter, Levy struck a deal with Doug Petkovic to buy Heritage Steak & Whiskey, which had opened in late 2023 in the former Fleming's Prime Steakhouse space. Petkovic did "the heavy lifting" on the building; RED added cosmetic touches — new paint, carpet, furniture, lighting and art, with the color scheme shifting from blues to browns and reds.

• On the Walls: Bold artwork on loan from Contessa Gallery features work by celebrity photographers Harry Benson and Lawrence Schiller. In the lounge, community tables gave way to flexible high-tops, and soft seating was swapped for banquettes.

• What's Cooking: Out went Heritage's wood-fired grills; in came RED's high-heat broilers. The main dining room offers a dozen cuts — from an 8-ounce filet up to a 35-ounce prime tomahawk — plus a happy hour and an all-night bar menu with lobster rolls, steak sliders, fried chicken sandwiches and a pastrami melt.

• What's Next: Levy plans to bring back lunch service in the coming weeks, aiming to revive the "martini lunch" on the Chagrin corridor. "This is going to be the premier place to have a business lunch," he says.

Worth Noting: Levy calls this "a RED that, while still sophisticated, is more approachable" — a slightly more casual take on the local steakhouse mainstay.

Read the full story.

Yesterday's Trivia Answer

Robert Manry used this sailboat – now on display at the Cleveland History Center – to cross the Atlantic, becoming the smallest craft ever to do so. The Tinkerbelle

Check back tomorrow for the answer to today's question

From the Editor

I hope you are reading our print version of the magazine. I have a link up near the weather at the top of this newsletter to nudge you to purchase a subscription if you don't already have one.

Obviously that helps pay the bills around here, but it is something more than that, too. Holding the print issue, you get the full effect of what we are trying to do. Photos, headlines, photo captions, statistical boxes, the ink, the pages themselves, fonts, the joy of getting something in the mailbox besides an ad or a bill and the storytelling. They all are part of the experience. We have a group of journalists who work to provide that experience every day. 

This newsletter is an avenue to keep you informed on the day-to-day in Cleveland, but the magazine gives you the heartbeat. Grab one if you can, put down the phone and enjoy.

 — Ron Ledgard, Managing Editor

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