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Plans for demolishing a city-owned health center in Cleveland’s Ohio City neighborhood and replacing it with 72 affordable senior apartments over offices plus community spaces got a warm reception today from the city’s Landmarks Commission.
Commission members reviewed the plans by City Architecture of Cleveland for the new development at 4242 Lorain Ave. but didn’t vote on it. That will come later this year. Today’s hearing was intended only to give feedback on a conceptual proposal.
It followed an earlier meeting of the Ohio City Design Review Committee whose members were also supportive. They said the scale of the proposed four-story, 71,500-square-foot building was appropriate for the neighborhood — the Ohio City Historic District.
The planned building’s 62 one-bedroom apartments and 10 studios would be for persons 55 years and older, to be affordable to 30-70 percent of the Area Median Income (AMI). Low Income Housing Tax Credits were awarded to the project in May by the Ohio Housing Finance Agency.
Ohio City Inc. (OCI), a partner in the development with Philadelphia-based Pennrose Inc., plans to have an office on the ground floor of the building’s west end. Between the office and West 44th Street will be an outdoor landscaped patio with a seat wall.
Construction is due to start in summer-fall of 2026 by general contractor John G. Johnson Construction Co. of Cleveland. But not all funding is in place for the roughly $26 million project. Its construction cost is now estimated to be about $2 million higher than it was at the start of the year, said Casey Poe, an urban planner at City Architecture.
Pennrose and OCI were chosen by the city in January to redevelop the 1.5-acre site after responding to a request for proposal. process. The development will address a need for affordable senior housing in Ohio City as rents have risen due to gentrification.
The city is vacating the two-story Thomas F. McCafferty Health Center in favor of the recently renovated Northern Ohio Blanket Mills, 3160 W. 33rd St., in the Clark-Fulton neighborhood. The 1971-built health center later gained its name for a Cleveland city councilman who served from 1957-87 and passed away in 1993.
Occupying about one-fourth of the building, the city is the only tenant left in the McCafferty center. MetroHealth neighborhood services relocated from McCafferty to other sites along Lorain in recent years.
Landmarks Commission staff said they supported the health center’s demolition as they considered the building functionally obsolete and the new apartments and public spaces would be “a higher and better use.”
The development team has held numerous community meetings to guide the design process for the new mixed-use building. The most recent community meeting was held two weeks ago, said Katie Gillette, a partner at City Architecture.
“Community engagement has been a huge priority for the project, in terms of keeping the community informed,” Gillette told Landmarks Commission members. “The community has been very supportive and excited about the development.”
In reviewing the plans, some commission members said the building’s color palette needed to be toned down, especially the use of pink and purple on the north side facing a 43-space parking lot for tenants and management. Others wanted the use of face brick expanded and the metal panels and siding reduced.
There were also questions about the building’s only vehicular entrance to its parking lot, proposed to come off the one-way West 44th. Concerns were expressed about people trying to drive against the flow of southbound traffic for a short distance to avoid driving around the block to approach the lot from the north.
Architects said they supported eliminating an existing curb cut from Lorain Avenue to improve the pedestrian setting along Lorain. Another reason for eliminating the curb cut is the planned Cleveland Midway on Lorain, they said.
The midway would narrow the roadway in favor of more landscaping and a protected bike/pedestrian way on the north side of Lorain, between West 20th and 65th streets. The midway seeks to reduce curb cuts elsewhere on Lorain.
Commission members recognized that the intersection of West 44th and Lorain could become much busier in the coming years. Another multifamily development, 45 West, is planned on the other side of West 44th from the McCafferty site project. A traffic study was suggested.
The site has numerous trees around it, with mature trees along Lorain. Poe said 10 existing trees will be kept, including four mature trees along Lorain at the east end of the site and two at the west end.
While eight trees will be removed, 23 new ones will be added, she said. Also, two underground stormwater retention basins will be built under the parking lot, according to the conceptual plans that will be refined and submitted to the city for final approval by the end of the year.
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