The Massive Projects Transforming Cleveland’s Future

The article is published as part of an exclusive content-sharing agreement with neo-trans.blog.

Sometimes we’re in the weeds, hyperlocal, self-interested, pre-occupied with our own day-to-day lives. So sometimes it’s hard to appreciate the magnitude of things changing around us unless you step back and take a look at them in totality. NEOtrans did, and wow, there’s a lot of megaprojects to soak up just in Greater Cleveland!

What constitutes a megaproject? Everyone probably has their own bar to jump over to meet that test. For NEOtrans, and for purposes of keeping this article manageable, a megaproject is defined here as a construction project with a price tag of more than $250 million.

On that score, there are eight megaprojects that are significantly or fully funded in Greater Cleveland. They are all due to start construction or be completed by 2030. A few maybes for beyond 2030 are mentioned at the end.

These appear here not because NEOtrans likes them or doesn’t like them. They’re posted here because of their large scale and because some of them are happening or there’s a very good chance of them of them happening. Clevelanders almost certainly have their own opinions of which ones are “good” or “bad.”

In other words, urbanistas better get their photographs of these areas today and compare them with what you see and photograph five years from now. If you’re a real estate investor, these are the hot areas of tomorrow. And as a construction contractor, I hope you’ve already started hiring!

Presented in order of their projected start dates:

Project Clean Lake

• Sponsor — Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District
• Estimated cost — $3 billion
• Start date — 2011
• Details — If you knew what was happening beneath your feet, you wouldn’t be snickering about this project’s inclusion in the megaproject list. Massive, deep-bore tunnels, large enough to drive a train through them, have been excavated in recent years, more are getting dug and still more are coming.

It’s a 25-year program that began with a consent-decree with the Environmental Protection Agency in 2011 regarding combined sewer overflows discharging into Northeast Ohio waterways and, ultimately, Lake Erie during heavy rainfalls. The goals is to reduce annual raw sewage discharges from 4.5 billion gallons to 494 million gallons.

In addition to these large, deep-bore tunnels, Project Clean Lake also includes upgrades and expansions to wastewater treatment plants, plus green infrastructure such as rain gardens and permeable pavements to manage stormwater before it enters the sewer system. Our Great Lake is what makes Cleveland special and freshwater is a priceless resource.

Railcar Replacement Program

• Sponsor — Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority (GCRTA)
• Estimated cost — $450 million
• Start date — manufacturing of trains and infrastructure projects are underway, but most visible work won’t happen until about 2027. As of this month, the entire project is fully funded.
• Details — Greater Clevelanders have been riding the same Rapid trains since the early- to mid-1980s. Many of you have no memory of what came before. So when the first of 60 new trains arrive here next year and go into service in 2027, it’s going to be a big deal.

But for those who pay a little closer to attention to the GCRTA, they also know this railcar acquisition means the entire 34-mile rail system and its 47 stations are going to be retrofitted. It will be standardized into a light-rail network where any train can use any of three lines that extend outward from Tower City Center in five directions.

The goal is a more efficient rail network where fewer trains are needed to run more frequent service than is offered now and with fewer transfers downtown. It also means GCRTA is committed to a rail system for Cleveland to develop housing and jobs around its stations for decades to come.

Airport Terminal Modernization Program

• Lead sponsor — City of Cleveland Department of Port Control
• Estimated cost — first phase is $1.6 billion
• Projected start date — Gold Lot construction at Terminal D starts this year.
• Details — The project’s official name is the Cleveland Hopkins International Airport Terminal Modernization Development Program. Like the Rapid system, the existing, two-level, main airport terminal is the same transportation infrastructure that’s been around for decades — 1978 to be exact. It shows.

Sure, concourses have been added and updated over the years, but it’s the same front door to Cleveland that’s been there since the disco era. After the multi-step first phase provides a new main terminal in 2032, additional phases will bring new concourses, aprons and airfield improvements totaling $3 billion.

A new Gold Lot is due next year. A 6,000-space parking garage and ground transportation center will be built by 2029 on the current site of the 1,080-space Orange Lot. Opening of the new garage and transportation center, featuring a GCRTA subway station, will allow the 4,000-car smart garage to be demolished and replaced with a new main terminal.

Cuyahoga County Central Services Campus

• Lead sponsor — Cuyahoga County
• Estimated cost — $889 million
• Projected start date — end of this year
• Details — Cuyahoga County’s existing correctional facilities downtown have been described with many terms. Rehabilitating isn’t one of them. Inhumane, life-sucking, dangerous are among the superlatives that can be published in this family-friendly, safe-for-work blog. The old jail facilities range in age from 31 to 49 years.

Last year, the county bought 72 acres of land near Transportation Boulevard, Granger Road and Interstate 480 in suburban Garfield Heights for a new, modern jail. It is the most expensive new building ever to be built in the county — a distinction it will hold for less than a year (see next project). Yet few wanted the jail in their community despite the thousands of construction jobs and 700 permanent jobs.

After the new jail opens by early 2029, a significant portion of the Justice Center downtown can be demolished. That is perhaps one of the most significant visual changes most of us will hopefully get to experience from the new jail. It offers an opportunity to remake at least seven acres of downtown land and possibly more.

Innerbelt-Central Interchange modernization

• Lead sponsor — Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT)
• Estimated cost — Group 3 Part A estimate is $320 million
• Projected start date — early 2026
• Details — The entire, decades-long reconstruction of the 5-mile-long Innerbelt section of Interstate 90, from Tremont through Downtown Cleveland to the lakefront, carries a price tag of about $2 billion. Even so, just this portion of the Innerbelt reconstruction puts it into the megaproject category.

Modernization of the 70-year-old Innerbelt is broken up into 10 sections ranging in price from $5 million to $500 million. This portion of the Innerbelt, described in dry plannerspeak as Group 3 Part A, is due to take six years of construction. It is the only one of five sections of Innerbelt reconstruction left to do that is fully funded. More detail about this project is available on ODOT’s Web site.

Within this portion, construction work will replace sharp curves with sweeping ramps and bridges through the Central Interchange with Interstate 77 and a 3-mile stretch of SmartLane technology. Also the section of I-90 from East 9th Street east to Carnegie Avenue will be rebuilt and realigned with new bridges for East 22nd Street and Carnegie Avenue over the busy highway.

New Huntington Bank Field + development

• Lead sponsor — Primacy Development LLC (aka Haslam Sports Group)
• Estimated cost — $3.6 billion
• Projected start date — early- to mid-2026
• Details — Unless you’ve been under rock for the past year and a half, you’ve heard all about this project. Most if not all of the funding is in place to build an enclosed, $2.4 billion, roughly 66,000-seat stadium for the Cleveland Browns, concerts, tractor pulls, teeth pulls and hair pulls.

Seriously though, even the most hardened detractors are probably going to find something impressive and experiential about this massive, new facility, as National Football League billionaires try to one-up each other with their new toys. If you can afford to attend, you’ll get that chance to be wowed by it starting with the 2029 football season.

Surrounding this new stadium, Primacy/Haslam plans $1.2 billion in supportive, mixed-use development which would be a megaproject in and of itself. But it remains to be seen how much actually gets built as the Haslams’ risk competing with their own near-megaproject just two miles away in Berea — the $151 million District 46 at CrossCountry Mortgage Campus.

North Coast Connector

• Lead sponsor — City of Cleveland
• Estimated cost — first phase $284 million
• Projected start date — 2027
• Details — At its most basic, this project is about converting a 90-year-old highway that doesn’t meet modern design standards and acts as a barrier between Downtown Cleveland and its lakefront. That highway is the Shoreway (Route 2) and the section to be redesigned in the fully funded first phase extends from West 6th Street to about East 12th Street.

The Shoreway will be redesigned as a downtown boulevard with intersections at West 3rd Street, Erieside Avenue and East 9th Street. By lowering the roadway to near ground level, it will also allow a land bridge to be extended from the park-like downtown malls, over the railroad tracks and boulevard, to a lakefront to be redeveloped with mixed use and public spaces.

How exactly will it be redeveloped? The city produced a masterplan to guide it, but the city and the North Coast Waterfront Development Corp. have started a request for qualifications process to solicit interest in developing it. That includes 50 acres of land currently occupied by the existing Huntington Bank Field and a seldom-used waterfront parking lot north of it.

CHEERS

• Lead sponsor — Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority
• Estimated cost — $300 million
• Projected start date — by 2029
• Details — A new island and reshaped Lake Erie shoreline several miles east of Downtown Cleveland are the primary features of the Cleveland Harbor Eastern Embayment Resilience Strategy (CHEERS).

The goal is to add more recreational waterfront opportunities for residents next to Gordon Park and protect Interstate 90 from lake erosion. Funding is hand to carry out the project — it’s simply a matter of the Port of Cleveland having a new place to dump dredgings from the navigable Cuyahoga River and Cleveland Harbor to maintain sufficient drought for commercial shipping.

If only it were so simple. The project, a partnership with the Cleveland Metroparks, city of Cleveland and others, requires federal permits from the Army Corps of Engineers. It’s taking a long time to get them. So the Port of Cleveland recently extended a contract to keep depositing dredgings at the northeast corner of Burke Lakefront Airport until 2029.

Consolidated Courthouse

• Lead sponsor — Cuyahoga County
• Estimated cost — up to $700 million
• Projected start date — To be determined
• Details — For a project that is significantly funded, this effort is taking an extremely long time. NEOtrans recently checked in with county officials who spoke off the record and said there are no updates or announcements coming on this project. The lack of direction on this project after six years of planning is not a good look.

There appears to be disagreement between Cuyahoga County Executive Chris Ronayne, County Council members and especially Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas judges on whether and how to move forward with this megaproject. If there was consensus, this project would already be under construction.

The options are to rebuild and add onto the existing, 50-year-old Justice Center courthouse tower, 1200 Ontario St., build a new courthouse complex south of the lakefront railroad tracks between West 3rd and West 9th streets, or convert either the old Sherwin-Williams headquarters, 101 W. Prospect Ave., or the Centennial building, 925 Euclid. Or do nothing.

Megaproject #10? The possibilities…

Construction is well underway on the first phase of The Riverfront Cleveland, developed by Bedrock Real Estate — the Cleveland Clinic Global Peak Performance Center. But there’s a phase 1B lurking in the background for want of more financing. That project is the 17-story Rock and Roll Land entertainment complex, to be located at the southwest corner of Ontario Street and West Huron Road.

Its projected $488 million cost makes it a megaproject. So does its 828,469 square feet of structures — parking garage, theater and hotel. It won a $9.1 million Transformational Mixed Use Development (TMUD) tax credit from the state in January. But Bedrock requested $40 million for the project. With the TMUD program renewed this summer, it remains to be seen if Bedrock will ask for more.

There’s going to be a push to expand the Huntington Convention Center of Cleveland as bonds to renovate it. One reason is that Destination Cleveland and the Cuyahoga County Convention Facilities Development Corp. have turned away business because they cannot accommodate more big meetings, conventions and exhibitions.

That was before the I-X Center will be redeveloped, reportedly as a data center, and after a $50 million convention center expansion opened last year. The center is seeing more visits than before the pandemic. A follow-on expansion with hotel will easily blow past the $250 megaproject threshold.

The other reason for the push to expand is because the 20-year bonds that rebuilt the convention center in 2013 are due to expire in 2027. A mix of lease, lodging tax and property tax revenues could be used to help finance a second convention center hotel. The logical site is for the convention center to keep expanding west into the 7-acre Justice Center site or north toward the lakefront — or both.

Lastly, keep an eye on Bedrock’s Rock Block site. Yes, we’ve all heard about Cosm, and as much as that will add hundreds of thousands of downtown visits, it’s not a megaproject. The neighboring two pieces of land in the Rock Block probably will be.

Given the price ($26.5 million) that Bedrock paid for that land, the only way to recoup it is to build big which, on this 3-acre site, means tall. Bedrock usually likes to offer land-based partnerships to big developers to build stuff on their property and that’s the rumor of what’s in the works here.

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