Cuyahoga County breaks ground for medical mart and convention center
With the clunk of a shovel, officials this morning celebrated the start of construction on the $465 million medical mart complex. Cuyahoga County Executive Ed FitzGerald, Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson and Gov. John Kasich were among the government and business leaders who symbolically kicked off the project. "We will make Cleveland one of the great cities in the world again," Kasich said.
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Cuyahoga County bigwigs to break ground officially today, but medical mart work already under way
At today's 11 a.m. ceremony, a host of familiar bigwigs will symbolically break ground on Cuyahoga County's $465 million medical mart complex. But small, unfamiliar firms have been digging up the downtown Cleveland site since the county took ownership Jan. 3. Aiming to award work beyond the regular cast of contractors, the county and its private partner, Chicago-based MMPI, have held workshops to help small businesses owned by women or minorities bid on contracts.
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A look at Northeast Ohio’s growing neurotechnology industry
Cleveland Clinic neuromodulation spinoff Intelect Medical may have stealthily exited Cleveland to set up shop in Boston, but the company’s recent $78 million sale to Boston Scientific (NYSE: BSX) highlights Northeast Ohio’s growing strength in neurotechnology. The Cleveland area — along with cities like Raleigh, North Carolina; Chicago; and Shanghai, China — was identified last year as a “region to watch” among growing neurotechnology cluster areas by trade group the Neurotechnology Industry Organization (NIO). Northeast Ohio’s neurotech strength is concentrated in medical devices. (San Francisco and Boston are home to the world’s leading neurotech clusters.)
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Cleveland's going up: New projects, pioneers poised to give city a lift: Joe Frolik
You might call me crazy don't worry, you won't be the first but I think that in 10 years, we will look back on 2010 as the year that Cleveland turned the corner and began to regain its status as a vibrant American city. The Census Bureau report that came out last week was the latest grim reminder of how far this region has fallen. While the population of the United States rose 9.7 percent in the past 10 years, Ohio's was almost flat. That'll cost the state two congressional seats. At least one will disappear from Greater Cleveland.
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Cleveland medical mart project to break ground in January
The long-awaited groundbreaking for Cleveland’s $465 million medical mart project will be… drum roll, please… Jan. 14, 2011. The ceremonial turning of the ground “on the historic Cleveland Malls” will happen at 11 a.m. that Friday, according to MMPI, the Chicago-based property developer that’s leading the project. The event, which also will feature remarks from civic, business and government leaders, is free and open to the public. Construction on the Cleveland Medical Mart & Convention Center will begin before that date, however — on Jan. 3.
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Now it's a real deal: Cuyahoga County and MMPI Inc. sign closing documents on Cleveland medical mart and convention center
Break out the construction fences. Get ready for earth movers and cranes. And say goodbye to the downtown Cleveland Mall as we know it. On Thursday, the medical mart and new convention center proposed for downtown Cleveland switched from imagination to reality. The signing of closing documents by Cuyahoga County and its private-sector partner, MMPI Inc. of Chicago, marked the project's true beginning. It also concluded an often ugly and contentious five years of planning.
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JumpStart will move offices to Midtown, becoming first tenant in new tech building
A new office and research building in Cleveland's Midtown neighborhood has snagged its first tenant JumpStart Inc., a nonprofit organization that cultivates, connects and funds entrepreneurs throughout the region. JumpStart has signed a 10-year lease on 9,500 square feet at the MidTown Tech Park, a $28 million project that is under construction at Euclid Avenue and East 69th Street. It's a small deal in a big building more than 128,000 square feet between Euclid and Carnegie avenues. But it brings a key economic-development group into Cleveland's Health-Tech Corridor, an emerging district that runs from East 22nd Street to University Circle.
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Living Cities to award $14.75 million to Cleveland to boost redevelopment effort masterminded by Cleveland Foundation
Cleveland has made the cut in a national philanthropic competition aimed at jump-starting fresh ideas about how to fight poverty, rebuild urban wastelands and build wealth in poor neighborhoods. Living Cities, a consortium of the world's 22 largest foundations and banks, is set to announce today in Detroit that Cleveland is one of five U.S. metropolitan areas to share an $80 million basket of grants and loans. Cleveland and the other winners Detroit; Baltimore; Newark, N.J.; and Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minn. were selected from 23 competing cities.
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State to issue $10 million in Ohio New Markets Tax Credits
The state of Ohio has announced the winners of the first round of $10 million in Ohio New Markets Tax Credits, a new effort to add state support to the Federal New Markets Tax Credits program, which provides aid for job-creating projects and businesses in economically distressed areas. Groups selected to receive the state credits already have received federal new markets allocations under the federal program. Two recipients are from Cuyahoga County: the Key Community Development New Markets LLC, which received $3 million, and Northeast Ohio Development Fund LLC, which received $2 million.
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Developers lined up to build 150-room hotel in University Circle
A Chagrin Falls developer and a North Carolina hotel manager have signed on to build a $27 million hotel in University Circle, across the street from University Hospitals's new cancer center. Snavely Development Co. and Concord Hospitality Enterprises Co. plan a 150-room, eight-story hotel off Cornell Road, behind a retail strip that runs along Euclid Avenue. The brand of hotel has not been announced.
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Developer John Ferchill plans University Circle tech center
Developer John Ferchill today unveiled plans for a $98.6 million tech center on a University Circle site currently occupied by the 3rd District police station and a Cleveland Public Library branch. To make the project work, the Ferchill Group is negotiating with the city of Cleveland to build a new 3rd District station at 4501 Chester Ave., the site of the former Ward Baking Co. Mr. Ferchill unveiled his plan at a Cleveland City Council hearing this morning. City council must approve the sale of the city-owned Ward Baking land and approve the complex financing for the new police station.
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University Hospitals keeps bottom line healthy with expansion
University Hospitals is wrapping up the biggest project in its history, a $1.2 billion expansion that is sprouting new medical facilities around Northeast Ohio and linking them with advanced technology. In the face of an economic downturn that rattled even the relatively stable health-care industry, UH pressed ahead with the five-year project, called Vision 2010. By the middle of next year, the regional health-care network will have finished remaking its main Cleveland campus, opened a new suburban hospital and outpatient facilities, and begun introducing systemwide electronic medical records.
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Cleveland is helping create the medical advances that are coming out of war in Iraq
Joseph Gross tells people he has more legs than some people have shoes. He's not kidding. On the days he runs, he pulls on his running leg. On the days he bicycles, he attaches his bicycling leg. When he golfs, it's his golfing leg. And then there's his everyday, getting-around leg. He has three of those, in case one's in the shop. The Iraqi war veteran counts on his collection of prosthetic limbs to help him live the life he would've had if half his right leg hadn't been blown off by a suicide car bomb in Baghdad in the middle of the Iraq war.
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MMPI Inc. sees interest grow in Cleveland medical mart and convention center project
It appears interest is growing in the planned medical merchandise mart and convention center in Cleveland. MMPI Inc., the Chicago-based developer behind the project, said it has received its 32nd signed letter of intent from a tenant for permanent showroom space in the medical mart. MMPI said it also has 16 letters of intent for conferences, conventions and trade shows at the complex.
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Cleveland Planning Commission grants convention center preliminary approval
The Cleveland Planning Commission today conditionally approved the design for a downtown convention center, giving the go-ahead to slope the mall between Public Auditorium and a to-be-designed medical mart. Members have not yet signed off on the mart building, the other half of Cuyahoga County's $425 million, taxpayer-financed project, because they haven't seen detailed drawings. They also want more information on the square footage and layout of the underground convention center and more frequent meetings with the county's developer, Chicago-based MMPI.
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Medical device outsourcing company Farm to open Cleveland office
Farm, a company that specializes in product development for medical device firms, is opening an office at the Cleveland Clinic’s new cardiovascular technology incubator. Farm plans to staff the office with executives from its New Hampshire offices beginning next week, but eventually hopes to hire a dedicated Cleveland staff, said Matt Harkins, Farm’s business development manager. “Our ultimate goal is to build a big-enough client base in Cleveland to support a staff there to do development work,” he said.
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Cleveland Planning Commission applauds Mall design, but postpones approval
The vision could have been a tough sell for members of the Cleveland Design Review Committee, Landmarks Commission and City Planning Commission. After all, the revamped Mall is a modern departure from the century-old Burnham plan, which created the formal park as a respite from the bustle of city life. Yet on Friday, members lauded designs for the downtown space, reimagined as a slope rising toward Lake Erie, between Public Auditorium and a to-be-built medical mart. They applauded planned tree-lined promenades and a low-slung, glass building on Lakeside Avenue that would welcome visitors to a new convention center below.
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Medical mart developers unveil architectural, landscaping plans
Cleveland's official arbiters of planning and design today expressed their approval of the architectural and landscaping plans for the new convention center, medical merchandise mart and surrounding public spaces. They also were pleased to hear from Mark Reddington of Seattle-based LMN Architects, the principal architects for the project, that the project remains on target to meet its $425 million budget.
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LMN Architects will propose sloping the downtown Cleveland Mall to create a dramatic new convention center entry
The architects of the new Cleveland convention center have something radical in mind for the downtown Mall a grassy slope topping a glassy new convention center entrance on the south side of Lakeside Avenue. Under a proposal from LMN Architects of Seattle, the middle section of the Mall – known as Mall B – would gradually rise from south to north, culminating in a 27-foot-high viewing platform from which visitors could survey the lakefront to the north. Passersby would feel naturally lured to climb the slope and enjoy the view, giving the Mall a sense of activity and liveliness it lacks today, the designers said Wednesday evening in an interview. The slope would also create natural amphitheater facing south for outdoor performances, movie screenings or civic gatherings.
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Downtown mall would become hill under schematic design for medical mart project
Imagine the staid downtown Mall transformed into a grassy slope climbing toward Lake Erie, flanked by the neoclassical Public Auditorium and a modern glass medical mart. Beneath the apex of the hill, 20 feet above Lakeside Avenue, stands a long, low, glass-fronted building that leads to a new convention center below. And on either side of the slope, run tree-lined promenades, surrounded by "urban rooms" a reading garden or dog park or whatever else planners dream up.
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Flats East Bank project receives $20 million from foreign investors
Wealthy foreign investors have committed $20 million to the Flats East Bank project, motivated by the promise of profits and permanent residency in America. Eddy Zai, an international business consultant in Pepper Pike, is using a little-known immigration program to attract the investment, considered a key to restarting the long-awaited, $275 million plan to bring an office tower, boutique hotel and retail to the east bank.
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Midtown project attempt to 'resettle' city
Fred Geis sees his group's effort to develop a $20 million office/ warehouse building in Cleveland's Midtown neighborhood oriented to medical and tech tenants as more than a real estate development. Indeed, Mr. Geis, one of two brothers running the Streetsboro-based Geis Cos., describes the project as part of his personal mission to “resettle Cleveland.”
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Philips builds multi-million-dollar innovation center
Philips Healthcare earlier this month opened a $33.4 million Global Advanced Imaging Innovation Center at University Hospitals Case Medical Center in Cleveland, which will collaborate with the medtech company in a five-year partnership to research and test a variety of medical imaging products developed by the firm. A spokeswoman for Philips said the company had looked at other sites around the world to develop such a partnership, but chose the current locale based on its status as a growing regional medical imaging cluster.
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State of Ohio awards $3.5 million grant for MidTown Tech Park project
With the award today of a $3.5 million grant from the state of Ohio, the office-warehouse development in Cleveland's Midtown neighborhood previously known as the Euclid Tech Center, but now called MidTown Tech Park, is a go. Developer Fred Geis said his family's Geis Cos. will break ground in November for the $22 million development that is the first piece of the Health Tech Corridor announced earlier this year. The development team also includes the Coyne family, led by real estate broker Terry Coyne and former commercial mortgage broker Jim Doyle.
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Developer MRN Ltd. to break ground Monday on Uptown project in University Circle
After decades of discussions and nearly five years of planning, a developer finally is ready to build homes, stores and restaurants along Euclid Avenue in University Circle. MRN Ltd. closed today on its financing and plans to break ground Monday for the $44.5 million first phase of its long-anticipated Uptown project. Two buildings, comprising 102 apartments over retail space, will sit at the heart of $300 million-plus in ongoing and planned development radiating from Euclid at Mayfield Road. The apartments will replace a dusty parking lot and a dingy shopping strip at East 115th Street, across from the expanding Cleveland Institute of Art.
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Cleveland Clinic to break ground for $75 million laboratory medicine home
The Cleveland Clinic on Friday will break ground on a $75 million home for its Pathology and Laboratory Medicine Institute and Cleveland Clinic Laboratories — a move that will create hundreds of new jobs. Consisting of steel and glass, the three-story, 135,000-square-foot structure will be located at East 105th Street and Carnegie Avenue. Upon its planned completion in the fourth quarter of 2011, the building will become the eastern-facing cornerstone of the main campus.
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MidTown Tech Park developers get $3.5M grant for biomedical site
MidTown Tech Park — a proposed office, laboratory and research redevelopment project in the middle of Cleveland’s developing Health-Tech Corridor — has been awarded a $3.5 million grant from Ohio’s Job Ready Site program, enabling the project to start. It was the final financing piece needed by Streetsboro, Ohio, developer Geis Cos. and the Coyne family to go ahead with their plans to buy the site at East 69th Street and Euclid Avenue, remediate it and build a 112,000 square-foot building to attract biomedical companies, according to the governor’s office.
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Cleveland announces new Health and Technology Corridor
Ohio Governor Ted Strickland and Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson announced on Thursday that Cleveland's Euclid Corridor would be designated a "hub of innovation and opportunity," with the road stretching between Cleveland State University and University Circle to be christened the Cleveland Health and Technology Corridor. The hub, an urban revitalization partnership, will help catalyze the city and region’s world-class healthcare and biomedical device technology assets to drive sustainable growth for the community.
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Ohio awarding 'hub' status to Cleveland's Health-Tech Corridor
Cleveland's health care cluster is about to burn brighter. Gov. Ted Strickland will announce today that the newly formed Cleveland Health-Tech Corridor, stretching from University Circle to Cleveland State University, will be designated a "Hub of Opportunity and Innovation" by the state. The hub status brings with it a $250,000 matching grant and priority status for millions of dollars in grants and loans that the Ohio Department of Development and other state agencies dole out yearly, officials said.
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Cleveland: New imaging center, 'hub' status boost bioresearch
The collaboration of Cleveland hospitals, businesses, universities and foundations in bioresearch is becoming the healthiest part of the region's economy. Philips Healthcare announced it will build a $38 million research center in University Hospital's new cancer center that's under construction. The proximity of research, doctors, patients and medical students was a key point in Philips' decision. Case Western Reserve's Medical School will also be a partner.
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Cleveland’s Health Corridor To Include New Philips Imaging Center
Governor Ted Strickland declared the Corridor stretching from University Circle to the Cleveland State University a state hub of innovation and opportunity. With the announcement comes word that Philips Healthcare will locate its Global Advanced Imaging Center at University Hospitals Case Medical Center.
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Cleveland's abandoned Warner & Swasey complex could become a tech center
A local developer could revive the former Warner & Swasey Co. facility, a dilapidated and boarded-up complex that looms over East 55th Street and Carnegie Avenue. The city of Cleveland, which owns the property, is working on a deal with Hemingway Development and HzW Environmental Consultants LLC. Hemingway, a division of the Geis Cos. of Streetsboro, wants to restore the 130-year-old buildings for offices, labs and warehousing or manufacturing space uses that fit with an effort to brand and promote the Midtown area of Cleveland as a health and technology corridor.
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Conventions quietly pile up at med mart
The private developer of Cleveland's planned convention center and medical merchandise mart hasn't made any announcements about landing tenants, as a competing project in Nashville, Tenn., did last week. But MMPI Inc. quietly has lined up more than a dozen medical or health care conventions for the convention center that's expected to open in 2013.
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Cleveland Health-Tech Corridor could solve space problem
Laboratory and office space for up-and-coming biomedical companies has been tight in the University Circle area of Cleveland for several years. Not a bad problem to have, until you start turning away promising young tenants for lack of space. And consider this: Northeast Ohio, which had about 250 biomedical companies in 2003, now has more than 600. So the space problem is probably getting worse.
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MMPI and Cuyahoga County Announce Landscape Architecture Team for Cleveland Medical Mart and Convention Center
A Renowned landscape architecture firm Gustafson Guthrie Nichol Ltd (GGN) of Seattle, Washington and Cleveland, Ohio-based McKnight Associates, Ltd. have been selected as the urban design/landscape architecture team for the Cleveland Medical Mart and Convention Center project, as announced earlier today at the Cuyahoga County Commissioners meeting.
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Cleveland partners unveil plans for a health-tech corridor along Euclid Avenue
Public-private collaborators today announced the launch of the Cleveland Health-Tech Corridor, which aims to harness two powerful forces to redevelop Euclid Avenue space demands of new companies and the supply-chain needs of growing entities like the Cleveland Clinic, Case Western Reserve University and University Hospitals.
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Healthy growth plans
St. Vincent Charity Hospital for more than a century has maintained a quiet existence on East 22nd Street in Cleveland, but a planned, $150 million renovation effort will aim to boost its presence and give it a new look.
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$35 million mixed-use development proposed for Midtown Cleveland site
Architect and real estate investor Richard Bowen hopes to build medical offices, homes, stores and restaurants on former industrial property in Cleveland's Midtown neighborhood. Through Shaker Associates LLC, Bowen has signed an agreement to buy 1.78 acres just south of Chester Avenue, near the Dunham Tavern Museum. The city of Cleveland is seeking a state grant of more than $190,000 to cover an environmental analysis of the site, which has been used for welding, auto repair and a range of manufacturing.
Cleveland's Euclid corridor project has paved the way to economic development Despite the challenging financial climate, the $197 million renovation of Euclid Avenue has become an economic development engine for the city. More than $3.3 billion worth of projects are in the works or recently finished along five miles of the vital artery.
The Global Cardiovascular Innovation Center Incubator will open in May 2010. Companies that are developing innovative solutions for the diagnosis and treatment of cardiovascular disease are eligible to become tenants. The GCIC Incubator program is accepting applications for clients across a full range of diagnostic, treatment and monitoring solutions in cardiovascular medicine.
It won't officially open for business for another 24 months, but that didn't stop people from celebrating the new Cancer Hospital at University Hospitals Case Medical Center on Thursday. Hospital officials and more than 100 onlookers gathered to raise the last structural beam for the new building, at Euclid Avenue and Cornell Road in Cleveland.
The former Tudor Arms Hotel at University Circle in Cleveland is becoming a Doubletree Hotel thanks to a $22 million renovation that developer MRN Ltd. of Cleveland is performing with help from the federal New Markets Tax Credit program.Construction workers are restoring the building as a 154-room Doubletree that will open in spring 2011.
The companies — business process software company Silico Corp. and electronic device maker Ardent Products Corp. — plan to move into the former Hill Floral Products distribution building at 6401 Midtown Commerce Park Drive this September. Ardent bought the 23,500-square-foot building in December for $665,000 and is in the process of remodeling it.