CLEVELAND — The City of Cleveland along with Jobs Ohio is working with Quicken Loans/Rocket Mortgage in hopes of helping the mortgage giant expand its footprint in Downtown Cleveland.
"My understanding is that there is the possibility for us to attract 700 to 1,000 jobs to Quicken Loans and these are professional high paying jobs," said Cleveland Council President Kevin Kelley told News 5. "I understand it's not a done deal, we're competing with Phoenix but we're also working with Jobs Ohio and some others to make this happen."
Jobs Ohio is the state's non-public business development arm. They'll put together a package of incentives as will the city, something Council President Kevin Kelley says they'll begin debating Wednesday.
"So we will kind of weigh the incentives vs. the benefit and my understanding is that the millions of dollars in payroll tax increase that will flow into our general fund far outweighs any incentive that we may provide and that's always the math that we do," Kelley said.
In 2016, Quicken Loans moved its then 400 Cleveland team members to the fourth and fifth floors of the historic Higbee building which left more room for future growth. They've since grown to a staff of around 700.
Kelley says the move if it happens, coupled with Sherwin-Williams' decision to build its world headquarters on these empty parking lots a block away sends a message to other businesses and would come at a great time.
"I think this goes further to just kind of like bring people back downtown, it's a big win as we come out of this pandemic," he said.
It was nearly a decade ago, on February 3, 2011, those plans were announced to use the mostly empty Higbee Building for the Horseshoe now Jack Casino.
