The article is published as part of an exclusive content-sharing agreement with neo-trans.blog. This story was also updated at 8:30 a.m. on May 29.
Suggesting the construction of an office building in Downtown Cleveland, which is still recovering from the pandemic, seemed like a strange idea. It was not until the listing for it was pulled from marketing sites shortly after NEOtrans wrote about it. Turns out the proposed Two Cleveland Center was publicized prematurely.
Two Cleveland Center was planned as a new-construction, 17-story data center with offices plus parking and ground-floor commercial uses at the southwest corner of St. Clair Avenue and East 12th Street in Cleveland’s Erieview District. It is at the eastern edge of the central business district where a 17-story building would actually stand out.
According to two public listing sites, the building was proposed to offer 343,524 square feet of leasable space, including 16,116 square feet on the ground floor. Next to and above that, 341 reserved parking spaces are planned on floors one through five in the new building and direct access to the existing One Cleveland Center garage next door, which has 1,120 spaces.
Atop Two Cleveland Center’s parking levels are planned another 12 floors of leasable space for data center uses, offices and lab spaces. In total, including the parking levels, the new building would measure about 474,600 square feet, according to marketing materials posted online by broker Newmark. Other development ideas are now being considered for the site, according to sources.
People familiar with the property said the idea was intended to test the market for the building. While Downtown has a number of Class B and C office buildings with high vacancies, repurposing them as data centers required too much work, they said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
Constructing a new, purpose-built office building at this location for data center tenants, made a lot of sense, they noted. It has access to high-capacity data transmission and electrical power lines along Superior Avenue. Office towers can also be secured and cooled more easily.
The project’s backers considered the nearby H5 Data Center, 1625 Rockwell Ave. It is one of two commercial buildings Downtown that were repurposed to accommodate data centers. H5 is a 351,000-square-foot, Tier III data center. Another is the Sterling Building, 1255 Euclid Ave., which has BlueBridge Networks, Zayo Group and DataBank Data Center as tenants.
The project was not proposed publicly in response to a potential tenant. Rather, it was promoted on speculation that there could be tenant interest in the building once it is marketed. Thus, no plans for the project have yet been submitted to the city. Project backers declined to discuss the amount of interest or inquiries in the building.
The Erieview District in which this project is proposed is seeing new development activity lately. Across St. Clair, a $218 million renovation and conversion of the 61-year-old, 38-story Erieview Tower into W-branded by Marriott apartments and hotel is getting underway. Just north of that, the former Ohio Bell headquarters was converted into The Bell apartments.
The property is a grassy, 0.88-acre property owned by E12 LLC, which reportedly has multiple shareholders but has not been publicly identified. A site that has been considered in the recent past for other new-construction office or residential development.
The property was one of three parcels acquired by an affiliate of Optima when it bought One Cleveland Center in 2008 for $86.25 million. It was then transferred to E12 LLC in 2017, according to Cuyahoga County property records.
In state records, E12 LLC’s agent is listed as Optima Management Group LLC, and its registration of a foreign limited liability company was signed by Optima principal Chaim Schochet. In the early 2010s, Optima and its affiliates was the largest property owner in downtown Cleveland but has since sold off most of its holdings here.
Optima was the the subject of a lawsuit filed in 2019 by the latest owners of PrivatBank in Ukraine who accused Optima principal Chaim Schochet and others of money laundering through PrivatBank. Optima’s offices in Cleveland and Miami were raided five years ago by the FBI as part of an apparent investigation.
Schochet’s lawyer said the lawsuit was “100 percent false and defamatory.” So far, the only apparent outcome was the State Department sanctioning one of Schochet’s business partners, Ihor Kolomoisky, from entering the United States.
For more updates about Cleveland, sign up for our Cleveland Magazine Daily newsletter, delivered to your inbox six times a week.
Cleveland Magazine is also available in print, publishing 12 times a year with immersive features, helpful guides and beautiful photography and design.
