Last week Cleveland City Council heard more details about the major facelift planned for the lakefront...near the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and FirstEnergy stadium. The project would eventually have 1,000 residential apartments, 80-thousand square feet of office space, and space for retail. , but now comes putting the plan into practice. The developer, Dick Pace of Cumberland Development, insists the project won't rely on city subsidies to reach the goal of creating a downtown neighborhood.
PACE: 鈥淲e hope it will be a wonderful mixed-use community, with mixed ages and mixed demographic. The key piece for us in creating a neighborhood is having it centered on a school. The ninth grade for the MC-squared STEM school is already there. We want to leverage off of that, and build a school which starts at age zero and all the way up to kindergarten, and from kindergarten to eighth grade, which will then feed into the STEM school. So we think that鈥檚 a key component to having a neighborhood downtown.鈥�
GANZER: 鈥淚 saw a piece in the Wall Street Journal the other day about putting apartments into downtown Cleveland, and one of the prices mentioned per month was, I think, $2500 per month for an apartment. Can you give a range for what you are expecting for these units yet?鈥�
PACE: 鈥淲e haven鈥檛 finished all of our demographic studies yet, and all of our market studies, for the housing piece. But there will be a range. Certainly there鈥檒l be high-end housing, because it鈥檚 such a great location that demands that. But it鈥檚 also鈥e want to see families, and we think we can serve those young families in an active, healthy community down there on the waterfront. By having a school that鈥檚 walkable, we think that鈥檚 going to create a learning community. So we want to see the teachers who teach at that school be able to live in that community as well.鈥�
GANZER: 鈥淲here is most of the financing coming from? Is this mostly a private venture?鈥�
PACE: 鈥淥ur development is not asking for any subsidy from the city, which I think is unusual. We are benefiting from the fact that the Flats East Bank is already up and running, and has proven the market. There are certainly public components. We will rely on the city for the things you normally rely on the city for鈥攆or the public infrastructure, the streets, the utilities, those types of things. But everything within our development site we鈥檙e doing with private financing, and we think that financing will be available for the project.鈥�
GANZER: 鈥淎re the banks working with you now? That鈥檚 something we鈥檝e thought about post-financial crisis, some of the banks are still really tight with credit. How tight has it been for you?鈥�
PACE: 鈥淚t鈥檚 been incredibly tight, especially with a development that they would normally deem as speculative. I think that鈥檚 starting to open up. We鈥檒l also probably be working with insurance companies and pension funds, and also with some private investors as well. So it will be a wide range.鈥�
GANZER: 鈥淵ou mentioned recently that this project鈥檚 going to be phased-in. Can you talk about what that actually means? How many years we鈥檙e looking at before having something there on the lakefront?鈥�
PACE: 鈥淲e hope to get approval from City Council within the month, and then we hope to be able to do the due diligence鈥攖hings like environmental, structural issues鈥攖o prove out the financing and be able to close financing hopefully by the end of the year, and break ground a year from now. That would be for the first phase. We鈥檙e doing this in three phases. The first phase will be generally around north coast harbor, including the retail office components and 250 apartments of the thousand.鈥�
GANZER: 鈥淭here鈥檚 a lot of excitement around the project, thinking about the lakefront being built up, but there are also skeptics. Some people have told me off-mic that we鈥檝e heard plans like this before, but they fall through鈥︹��
PACE: 鈥淲ell, a couple things make this timing the right timing for this project. One is that the mayor is fully behind the project. Second piece is the mayor鈥檚 laid the groundwork by getting the land available for development. The port is consolidating their operations to the West, and with that..that makes that land available for the city to lease. We are not buying the property, it will remain the city鈥檚 property. With those things in place it makes this a real project.鈥�
