CLEVELAND — Developers in Cleveland have long been known to preserve historic buildings by giving them a new purpose, and after the pandemic changed the downtown landscape with more people working from home, housing has become the new priority.
Construction projects seem to be underway on every other block downtown, and Michael Deemer, CEO of the Downtown Cleveland Alliance (DCA), said many of them are housing.
“Over the last 15 to 20 years, we’ve really reimagined Euclid Avenue as a hub of residential living and historic hotels,” he said.
Cleveland is in a unique position coming out of the pandemic, as the transition from office and retail space to housing has been underway for a long time, Deemer said.
The team at DCA is researching demand for downtown housing, and Deemer said it has grown substantially in the past decade.
“Whereas many cities and many other downtowns that are struggling with the impact of remote work, and what that really all means, they’re trying to figure out how to do this on the fly,” he said. “We’ve got a track record. We’ve got a strategy. We’ve got a toolbox. We have professionals in town who know how to do this work.”
One of those developers is Tom Mignona with Millenia Housing Development. He said developing historic downtown buildings can be risky, but the rewards are great.
“You want people to live, play and work downtown,” Mignona said. “Downtown is the core of the whole region, and all ships rise to the tide. A strong downtown leads to strong suburbs.”
Maria Banig, an architect with Millenia, said re-designing office space into housing can be challenging, especially historic buildings like 75 Public Square.
“The challenge is to just find the balance,” Banig said. “There are some things that we need to preserve for the sake of the project and some things that we need to rethink. It’s almost like you need to develop, think outside of the box mentality.”
Because of developers like the folks at Millennia, Deemer said he’s confident Cleveland’s downtown will continue to thrive as we adjust to a new landscape, and as a younger generation starts moving to Cleveland.
“We’ve really worked over the last 15 years or so in particular to not just supply housing, but to create an amenity-based mix of things to do and see and experience in downtown that attracts young people, and we’ve been very successful in doing that,” he said.
According to data collected by DCA, 10 million square feet of office space has been converted to housing and hotel rooms in Cleveland, and 80% of that development has happened in the last five years.
