Cleveland Lakefront Site Inspires Winning Urban Design From Harvard, MIT Team

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A redevelopment plan by a team of Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) students for the site of a former coal-fired power plant on Cleveland’s lakefront won the top prize in the 23rd annual Urban Land Institute(ULI)/Gerald D. Hines Student Urban Design Competition.

The winning plan, entitled “Lakeshore,” is a vision for part of the Cleveland area designed to address challenges posed by the post-COVID environment, social inequality, and climate change. The team comprised students from Harvard (Maurice el Helou, Eno Chen, Joshua Udemba) and MIT (Nathaniel Chavez-Baumberg and Thomas King).

With the permission of the site’s new owner, an affiliate of Utah-based Industrial Development Advantage LLC (IDA), ULI chose the 62-acre site of the former Lake Shore Power Plant, 6800 S. Marginal Rd. Another 4 acres of city land bank land immediately to the west was also included as part of the canvas to be redesigned by the ULI/Hines’ 83 global competitors.

The winning team received a prize of $35,000. It and the three finalists won prize money from the competition that was created with a generous endowment from longtime ULI leader Gerald D. Hines, the late founder of the Hines real estate firm. The winners were announced earlier this month at an event held here in Downtown Cleveland.

The Harvard/MIT team’s “Lakeshore” entry proposed a three-phase development vision, moving from west to east on the site. Each phase would be larger than the one before, ultimately building out a 2.25-million-square-foot mixed-use development with a project value of more than $1.1 billion. It would also tap into the Port of Cleveland’s/Cleveland Metroparks’ CHEERS lakefront plans.

All of the competition entrants submitted mixed-use development concepts for transformative megaprojects given the size of the site and its lakefront location near downtown. But the differentiating factors were in the planning details and how they were presented.

“Participating in the ULI Hines Competition pushed our team to transcend siloes and conventional development frameworks,” the winning Harvard-MIT team said in a written statement.

The vision was centered along on the construction of a new four-lane roadway that welcomed pedestrians, bikes and transit, connecting East 55th and 72nd streets along which most of the mid-rise development would be built. There also were more amenities — retail, schools, performing arts center, museum, rail station — proposed with each phase as more residential and commercial uses were built to support them.

“The challenge of reimagining Cleveland’s industrial waterfront forced us to confront difficult questions about equity, resilience and financial viability,” the Harvard-MIT team added. “What emerged was Lakeshore — a project that taught us how thoughtful urban interventions can simultaneously create compelling investor returns while building lasting community wealth.”

Cleveland was chosen to be the host city after a selection process run by ULI, said Paul Beegan, CEO and founder of Lakewood-based Beegan Architectural Design. He is also chair of the ULI Cleveland District Council. The local council had to present several sites to the review committee. The Lake Shore Power Plant site was selected for a variety of reasons.

“I think this site is representative of many of the challenges facing the many cities of the Midwest Rust Belt as we work our way through the post-industrial transformation to a knowledge- and service-based economy,” Beegan told NEOtrans earlier this year.

The site became a development opportunity on Cleveland’s lakefront after a First Energy power plant was razed in 2017 and the land was bought in 2023 by IDA, a company that repurposes former power plants sites. NEOtrans was first to report on the property acquisition. We followed up with an article about IDA’s proposed uses not being welcomed by lakefront advocates.

The annual ideas contest provides graduate and fourth-year undergraduate students with the opportunity to devise a comprehensive design and development scheme for a large-scale site in an urban area. The remaining three finalist teams, representing the Georgia Institute of Technology and MIT, will each receive $10,000, and another $10,000 was allocated among the honorable mention teams.

This year’s competition asked students for proposals to create a vibrant, mixed-use, mixed-income area on a former industrial site on Cleveland’s East Side. Working in partnership with the site owners, IDA, ULI created a challenge brief with input from local stakeholders asking the students to address issues of equity, housing affordability, access to the lakefront, sustainability, and connectivity to the surrounding communities.

“Congratulations to the four finalist teams on their outstanding proposals,” said Brad Soderwall, Managing Director, Hines. “Their work exemplifies the power of vision, collaboration, and creativity in shaping urban futures. It was inspiring to see such innovative ideas tackle the competition site’s unique challenges.”

The four teams that advanced to the final round of the competition were chosen from 83 entries by a jury of 14 leading ULI members from across the country. More information about the four finalists announced can be found here.

“All four finalist teams inspired the jury with imaginative visions to transform a dormant site along Cleveland’s waterfront into a dynamic, thriving neighborhood,” said competition Jury Chair Thomas Hussey.

“Ultimately, the Lakeshore proposal stood out for its thoughtful integration of mixed-use development, dynamic placemaking, community connectivity, and sustainable infrastructure,” he said. “It’s great to see the next generation of real estate leaders working across disciplines to create community-oriented development strategies that aim to generate lasting economic impact and enhance the quality of life for residents.”

The 14-member competition jury consisted of renowned experts from diverse backgrounds in commercial real estate, land use, and design — in addition to Jury Chair Hussey, principal at the architectural-engineering firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill in Chicago.

Locally based jury members included Beegan plus Mary Cierebiej, executive director at the Cuyahoga County Planning Commission; Ken Kalynchuk, director and principal at Project Management Consultants, LLC; and Liz Ptacek, principal at StepStone Group.

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