The article is published as part of an exclusive content-sharing agreement with neo-trans.blog.
As they say in target practice, “pay attention to the background.” That’s also good advice to use when reviewing plans for major urban developments like Bedrock’s Riverfront Cleveland masterplan. But the plans, in this case renderings, opened the door to inquire about Bedrock’s vision for another downtown megaproject.
At the latest meeting of the Design Review Committee of Cleveland’s Planning Commission, final site and lighting plans were approved for public realm improvements — riverwalk, kayak launch, streetscaping — next to the under-construction Cleveland Clinic Global Peak Performance Center.
But towering in the background of several renderings in a presentation by Bedrock’s public realm architect MKSK of Columbus were massings for two structures that don’t exist — at least not yet.
During the Sept. 5 meeting, those renderings were scrolled past in a matter of seconds. They were scarcely paid attention to during an hour-long presentation and discussion about the Riverfront project.
The Global Peak Performance Center, including a Cleveland Cavaliers’ practice facility, is the first phase of Bedrock’s $3.5 billion Riverfront Cleveland development masterplan. The renderings are publicly available; they are shared here in this article.
The next phase in that development masterplan is visible to the left side of the renderings. Seen is a largely featureless massing to show the scale of the $488 million Rock and Roll Land — a planned theater and 17-story hotel atop structured parking.
To the right side of the image are the two towers, set in downtown’s Gateway District. Like Rock and Roll Land, these structures are shown only as massings with little texture or program-specific details.
NEOtrans reached out to Bedrock’s Vice President of Communications Lora Brand to find out more about them. She hasn’t responded yet but we’ll keep trying. We also reached out to architects and contractors with whom Bedrock normally does business. They’re staying mum, too.
But Cleveland’s real estate industry is relatively small and people talk. So what are people saying about what’s in these renderings? A lot, as it turns out.
The scale of the two towers is significant. The western tower, rising on 0.8-acres of grassy, city-owned land at Ontario Street and Huron Road, appears to be just over 20 stories tall.
Reportedly, developing this site is sought to help create a continuous, active street presence on the sidewalk. It would link the Rock Block with the Riverfront development and Tower City Center by offering a more dynamic pedestrian experience along Huron.
Sources say this tower is proposed to be for offices. Now why would anyone want to add new office inventory to this post-pandemic market? Apparently, the leases for a number of large downtown tenants at older office buildings are due to run out in the next few years.
If downtown doesn’t have enough Trophy Class or even nationally competitive Class A inventory available to satisfy it, those office tenants could probably find it in the suburbs where many modern office properties are partially or entirely vacant.
Only two Downtown Cleveland buildings are Trophy Class — Key Tower, 127 Public Square, and Oswald Tower, 950 Main Ave. So Bedrock is apparently going to try to add to that inventory to capture a chunk of a market in transition. If they can ink a large anchor office tenant, the rest of the building would be available to speculative tenants.
Next to this site is the JACK Casino South Garage, 2151 Ontario, with 1,650 parking spaces. It’s not busy during the day so it could double as office parking for a new building.
This is the same site where, in 2014, the Collection Auto Group planned to build a two-story Ferrari car showroom topped with a 20-story office and condominium tower. Its proposal coincided with the exciting news that Lebron James was returning to the Cleveland Cavaliers. But Ferrari declined to be a part of it and the project faded.
The eastern tower has more texture to it. The top of it looks like the 28-story Cleveland Marriott Downtown at Key Tower, 1360 W. Mall Dr. But this Bedrock structure seems to be shorter, perhaps just under 20 stories.
This eastern tower is proposed for Bedrock’s 3-acre Rock Block, bounded by Huron, Prospect Avenue and East 4th Street. The Rock Block is where Cosm plans to build a three-level, 70,000-square-foot immersive entertainment and hospitality venue.
Site plans provided to the city for Cosm also showed two other future buildings, both with ground-level retail, topped with parking, commercial/hotel and/or residential. One would be at the southeast corner of Prospect and East 4th with the other east of the East 6th Street walkway, filling the area between Prospect and Huron.
The site plan doesn’t clarify whether one or both of these mixed-use structures would be high-rises. But the Riverfront Cleveland rendering suggests that only one would be a vertical structure — the one at Prospect and East 4th. The site is zoned to allow buildings up to 600 feet high.
Sources said that Bedrock originally wanted a much taller tower for the Rock Block site but pared it down to reflect economic realities. Apparently Bedrock originally wanted to build a structure comparable to its Hudson’s Detroit, a $1.4 billion, 685-foot-tall mixed-use skyscraper.
Such a building would have been taller than what Cleveland-based Stark Enterprises first proposed for the Downtown Cleveland site when it jointly owned the property with J-Dek Investments Ltd. of Solon for nine years. The Stark-led partnership planned a megaproject called nuCLEus.
Stark and J-Dek sold the property to Bedrock in early 2023 for $26.5 million. At that price, it would take a revenue-rich, high-rise development for Bedrock to recoup its investment.
There have been rumors that Bedrock and its owner Dan Gilbert would partner with other major investors on the Rock Block site. One is not a rumor — David Blitzer joined with Gilbert in investing $250 million into Cosm in 2024.
That helped secure Cosm for Downtown Cleveland despite efforts by the Haslam Sports Group to land it instead at the Haslams’ Brook Park stadium site for the Cleveland Browns.
Gilbert also joined with the Ricketts family, majority owner of the Chicago Cubs, in trying to acquire Chelsea Football Club of the English Premier League in 2022. While that bid failed, Gilbert and the Ricketts family reportedly are working on development opportunities, including at the Rock Block site in Cleveland.
Some public sector financing options are more abundant today than they were when Stark and J-Dek owned the property. The All Ohio Future Fund was created in 2024 and offers a $750 million pot of money to pay for infrastructure improvements to support new development projects.
The Transformational Mixed Use Development tax credit, originally sought by Stark to help build nuCLEus, was renewed and expanded as part of the two-year state budget passed last summer.
So were several other development programs — Opportunity Zone (OZ) tax credits, Community Reinvestment Area (CRA) megaprojects, historic tax credits, parking garage subsidies and the Brownfield Remediation Program.
Another new state program, if it survives legal challenges, could come into play here, too. That program would allocate $1.7 billion in unclaimed funds to fund new stadiums and associated mixed-use developments, dubbed “ballpark villages.” Rocket Arena and Progressive Field are close by the Rock Block site.
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