A massing of a proposed hotel for Cleveland’s Ohio City neighborhood at Lorain Avenue and West 26th Street. While the details of the proposed concept are still being worked out, planning for the hotel is far enough along that its developer, Places Development, is unveiling it to the public (Places). CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.
Hotel would fill a gap in the market
A successful company finds an unmet need in a market and fills it. According to Dan Whalen, founder and CEO of Places Development, the lack of a hotel west of downtown Cleveland to near Hopkins International Airport is one such gap in the market. To fill that gap, he is filing plans for a new, eight-story boutique hotel at 1960 W. 26th St. in the Ohio City neighborhood.
The site is currently a 90-space parking lot and is surrounded by attractions and activities. To the west is St. Ignatius High School, which is currently a $40 million expansion its sports facilities. These facilities accommodate teams and visitors who often require overnight accommodation.
To the east are the West Side Market and Intro’s event facilities. To the north are Mitchell’s Ice Cream Kitchen & Shop and the Great Lakes Brewing Company microbrewery, both popular tourist attractions.
But bridging that gap has proved challenging for others who came before them and failed. Last month, partners who Bridge construction in Ohio City have scrapped a 132-room Cleveland Motto By Hilton hotel from their plans and are instead pursuing a purely residential project.
Preliminary site plans for a proposed boutique hotel in Ohio City are currently going through the city’s approval process. This process begins at the block club level, then moves through a neighborhood-level design review committee, and then the citywide design review panel of the City Planning Commission. Approval from the Landmarks Commission may also be required, as the site is located in a designated historic district (Places).
Graham Veysey, head of Grammar Properties, which is working with M Panzica Development to deliver Bridgeworks, told NEOtrans: “The credit landscape is unaffordable for the hospitality sector.”
Nearby, Mark Raymond, owner of the Ohio City Hostel, released plans for 2023 for a Hulett Hotel with 63 rooms. It included six concierge apartments, two street-facing retail spaces, a new ground-floor restaurant with sidewalk terrace and a rooftop bar overlooking the planned Irishtown Bend ParkBut here too, no visible progress has been made so far.
Whalen hasn’t let that discourage him, saying his previous work as president of Harbor Bay Hospitality gave him insight into the need for a hotel.
In the 2010s, Whalen encouraged Chicago-based Harbor Bay Real Estate Advisors to build Intro, a $150 million, 47,000-square-foot, mass-wood-clad mixed-use development at the corner of Lorain Avenue and West 25th Street in Ohio City. The building was 95 percent occupied before it even opened, at rents that were among the highest in the market.
In addition to nearly 300 apartments and commercial space on the ground floor, the nine-story building has a rooftop event center called Truss. It has attracted more than 150 events a year. But it could have attracted even more if there had been a hotel nearby in Ohio City’s bustling Market District, Whalen explained.
Before Market Avenue was closed to traffic, she had this view of the hotel grounds across West 26th Street. The hotel’s guest entrance was located at this intersection, providing convenient access to an inviting pedestrian corridor all the way to West 25th Street and the West Side Market (Google).
“The neighborhood is crying out for something,” he said in May, when Announcement of his new company Places Development. “This neighborhood is in desperate need of and would benefit from a neighborhood-focused boutique hotel.”
Two days ago, Whalen presented his plans for a hotel in Ohio City to the Bridge Carroll Jay Block Club. Residents who attended the meeting said the club’s reaction to the plans was mostly positive. Residents’ concerns, as is often the case at block club meetings, centered around parking.
Here, the existing 90-space on-site car park would be replaced by an 80-space underground car park in a busy area that would likely become even busier with the construction of the hotel and its ancillary uses. Block club chairman Mark Musson did not respond to an email from NEOtrans seeking more information before the publication of this article.
“I think the meeting went well,” Whalen said. “The neighbors are excited about the prospect of a hotel here and are cautiously optimistic about the impact on existing parking.”
Conceptual architectural designs have been developed based on community input, a process that began this week (Places).
The proposal is for a roughly 90,000-square-foot building with a 130-room hotel and three food and beverage outlets — two on the ground floor and one on the roof. Whalen said it’s too early to reveal the name of the hotelier, partners or financing, but he hopes to start construction in late spring.
Other features of the project include about 4,500 square feet of meeting and event space, 3,500 square feet of spa amenities and a parking lot for guests underneath the building. Access to the parking lot would be from West 28th Street via a ramp on a narrow strip of land included in the pending purchase, preliminary plans show.
Construction costs were not yet disclosed, but are expected to be in the tens of millions of dollars. The presentation included a range of architectural examples of other boutique hotels for the audience to examine. Final architectural details will be added to the design during the public participation process.
“Architecture and visuals should not be taken literally at this time as we are in the very early stages and will refine the design as we better understand the construction costs involved,” Whalen cautioned. “We will present the same package at Ohio City’s monthly town meeting next week.”
Ohio City Inc. (OCI) interim CEO Jane Platten also did not respond to an email from NEOtrans seeking comment. But it was OCI that provided the property at the corner of Lorain and East 26th, just one block west of Intro.
In spring 2022 OCI has submitted a request for expression of interest in two adjacent parcels totaling 0.83 acres that it owns in Lorain-West 26th. Whalen was interested in the site while still in Harbor Bay and responded to OCI. He later had the response forwarded to his company and entered into a purchase agreement with OCI.
Although the fate of the neighboring, space-constrained Great Lakes Brewing Company facility still in limboThe hotel was designed with the assumption that the microbrewery would remain there in some form. Site plans show that access from West 26th and West 28th to the loading docks for the brewery is north of the hotel.
The west side of the hotel has a scaled-down Lorain facade that matches the height of neighboring historic buildings, with a pool deck arching above. While the concept design sees the rest of the hotel rising to eight stories, the lower roofline of the west side of the hotel will continue to the west side of the 26th and then be set back to the higher part of the hotel so the overall structure doesn’t overwhelm neighbors.
END
