This article was published as part of an exclusive content partnership with neo-trans.blog.
On most other plots of land, adding 17 homes to it would be noticeable from the street. But if a proposed expansion of the Market District Lofts in Cleveland’s Ohio City neighborhood happens, it might be the most below-the-radar residential development in the urban core since The Residences at The Guardian condominiums opened downtown. And the same developer is involved in both.
MRN Ltd. submitted plans to the city’s Building Department last week for converting the seventh floor, comprised entirely of offices, of the United Bank Building, 2012 W. 25th St., into market-rate apartments. A preliminary estimate of the construction work is $1.5 million, according to the application. The 10-story building is located on the opposite corner from the West Side Market.
“It expands the Market District Lofts project by adding 17 residential units in the building,” wrote MRN’s Chief Operating Officer Joseph Del Re in the application. “These units will include the same features as on floors three and four, including modern floor plans, in-suite washer and driers, energy-efficient features such as LED lighting, low-flow bathroom fixtures, and Energy Star appliances.”
The application also notes that the sprinkler system from the third and fourth floors will be expanded to the seventh floor. Additionally, the fire alarm system will be updated to accommodate the conversion from offices to residences.
“Units will be sized and priced to focus on creating a work force-focused, market-rate housing product that expands on the success established by the units on the third and fourth floor, while at the same time replacing antiqued and unused office space with a more desirable product type,” Del Re added.
According to its Web site, rents for the existing units at Market District Lofts currently range from just below $2 per square foot for one-bedroom apartments to just over $2 per square foot for the smallest studios. There are no units larger than one-bedroom apartments. Units range in size from 454 to 916 square feet, with the largest apartments on the third floor.
The seventh-floor floor plan will be like that of the fourth floor which also has 17 units. The largest apartments offered on the fourth floor measure in the range of 702 to 754 square feet.
There are eight apartments on the third floor, which exists only at the West 25th side of the 1925-built building. Behind, the first floor has a high ceiling extending up into what would otherwise be the third floor. That space hosted the elegant former United Savings and Trust Co. bank lobby, now the Bartleby supper club.
Renovations to and conversion of the seventh floor will be nearly identical to the work done for the fourth floor. Both the fourth and seventh floors fill the building’s entire floorplate, measuring approximately 14,000 square feet. The third and fourth floors were renovated and converted to apartments for approximately $4 million and opened for occupancy in 2019.
The residential portions of the building will be separated by offices on the fifth and sixth floors. Del Re did not respond to two e-mails from NEOtrans seeking more information about the future uses of those floors as well as others higher up in the building.
Cresco real estate recently listed nearly 6,000 square feet of office space as available on the seventh floor of the United Bank Building. City building department records show that the last new office tenant on the seventh floor arrived in 2016 when Title Law renovated 2,700 square feet of space for $30,000. MRN has owned the building since 2008.
Cresco also had the entire ninth and 10th floors listed as available, too. But that changed in April when MRN affiliate United Twenty-Fifth Building LLC sold two air rights parcels that contained those two floors to Top Floor Ventures LLC whose tax mailing address lists to William Shepardson of Shaker Heights.
Shepardson is president of WHS Engineering which has its offices on the United Bank Building’s second floor. Shepardson, son of Ray Shepardson who led the rebirth of Playhouse Square in the 1970s, has worked extensively with MRN on many of its developments including renovations of East 6th Street properties downtown and construction of the Uptown District in University Circle.
The United Bank Building’s top two floors were vacated earlier this year. In a story broken by NEOtrans, Cleveland-based financial planning firm Skylight Financial Group, a general agency of Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co. (MassMutual), relocated from the ninth and 10th floors at the conclusion of a 10-year lease. Both Skylight Financial and MassMutual had naming rights to the building.
The two firms took the 8,250-square-foot second floor of the The Avian at Thunderbird, 1956 Carter Rd., on Scranton Peninsula in the Flats. The BrewDog Cleveland Outpost has the entire first floor of the former Cuyahoga Lumber Co. sawmill.
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