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Long Cleveland’s most stable neighborhood, West Park has been getting a little gray in the 20th century. While several other Cleveland neighborhoods are seeing new housing and businesses get built, that investment has largely eluded West Park. Until now.
On successive days last week, two important developments in West Park took significant steps forward. On Sept. 4, ground was broken for the 19-unit Parker Townhomes, 3272 Warren Rd., located between the Warren Village Shopping Center and St. Mary Romanian Catholic Orthodox Cathedral.
The next day, Cleveland Planning Commission’s Design Review Committee approved sometimes-contentious plans for the $150 million North Campus expansion of Cleveland Clinic’s Fairview Hospital, 18101 Lorain Ave., a story broken by NEOtrans in 2023.
Demolition could start early next year of two small, connected buildings containing the Breast Center and the Respiratory Institute. Replacing them will be a 169,521-square-foot combined cancer center and medical office building overlooking the Rocky River valley on the north side of Lorain Avenue.
Once that is built, the Clinic plans to demolish the remaining structure, namely the Moll Cancer Center, and construct a 995-space parking garage fronted by a glassy, two-story atrium along Lorain.
After the new six-level garage is built, the 50-plus-year-old, 700-space Groveland Avenue garage south of Lorain is due to be demolished. In the future, that could also become a development site for the Clinic.
Plans for the expansion were approved after a traffic study was done and architects added significant amounts of landscape buffering from the residential area to the north and east of the east of the development site. Although that residential area is smaller after nine houses along West 179th Street were acquired by the Clinic and razed to expand the buffer.
The townhouse development also required the demolition of existing structures — five including several garages and two houses, including one fronting Warren. Ward 17 Councilman Charles Slife, who represents West Park, saw other linkages between the two projects.
“We hear a lot from Fairview Hospital staff and residents that they want to live near work,” he said at last week’s groundbreaking event. “But it’s tough to get into the neighborhood if you want something newer. We have a lot of demand for people staying in the neighborhood but not a lot of diverse (housing) product, so I think the important thing here is adding product.”
The last new housing development in West Park was the construction of 25 homes on Scullin Drive, off Chatfield Avenue. They were built in the early 2000s, Cuyahoga County property records show. The last new townhomes in West Park were built in the mid- to late-1980s on Puritas Avenue near Grayton Road.
Developer Maverick Building Co. owner Anthony Fiorini and Brian Salem of the Salem Team at eXp Realty said the townhomes will be offered at $499,000 to $550,000 and have 15-year, 100-percent property tax abatement on the homes.
Parker Townhomes got its building permit awarded on Dec. 15, 2023, two weeks before the 100 percent abatement was reduced for residential developments in Cleveland’s more stable neighborhoods. The project has been planned for three years.
Site preparations will continue into November when the first group of three townhomes will rise at the southern end of the narrow property, closer to Warren. Each townhome will be three stories tall with a first-floor garage, and built on a concrete slab, Fiorini said.
Salem said two events are coming up where prospective buyers can learn more about the Parker Townhomes. The first, for those who sign up to the VIP List online, is scheduled for Oct. 16 at Vosh at the Georgetown restaurant, 1414 Riverside Dr. in Lakewood.
The next event is a launch party for the development, due to be held from 4-7 pm Oct. 22 next door at St. Mary Romanian Catholic Orthodox Cathedral, 3256 Warren. More details will be provided online.
The Parker Townhomes are part of a small resurgence in for-sale housing developments. Last week, the Jefferson Hill Townhomes in Tremont won City Planning Commission approval. Last month, NEOtrans reported that the Woodhill Townhomes in Little Italy were restarting construction. And, construction is due to start soon on Thoreau Place townhomes in Lakewood.
“Older houses often have issues so it pushes people away from the community that otherwise they’d be happy to live in,” Slife said. “So I think this helps fill an important niche and hopefully demonstrates to the market where we can strategically do some new construction.”
Looking ahead, he said he hoped that developers can be encouraged to add more housing and possibly some mixed-use along some of West Park’s tired commercial corridors that need a shot in the arm.
“There are some other things that I think we could accomplish,” Slife said. “We do have large, old car dealerships on Lorain where you could do something different from this (townhomes) but still meet an unmet market.”
Not all development may convert commercial districts to residential. A large, vacant retail space at Lorain and West 150th Street was updated three years ago by New York City-based TLM Realty.
There, a former Kmart was redeveloped for new retailers Burlington, Ross Dress For Less and Big Lots plus a new Aldi’s grocery store and Starbucks was added to the site. However, Big Lots went bankrupt last year and closed this and dozens of other stores nationwide.
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