CLEVELAND — The City of Cleveland and Cleveland Metropolitan School district is looking for developers to purchase and reuse 12 school buildings and seven open plots of land currently owned by CMSD.
Developers will be able to tour the sites and need to submit their proposals by April 30, 2021. The preliminary selections will be made by May 31, 2021 before moving on to a six-month Phase 2 for due diligence.
After that period, developers could get possession of the land in Phase 3 with a year-long planning phase before breaking ground.
What does CMSD/Cleveland want?
The City and school district are looking for projects that will help lift up the surrounding neighborhood.
“Redevelopment plans should be guided by principles of racial equity and inclusion with respect to the surrounding neighborhood context and/or neighborhood wealth-building initiatives,” reads the Request for Qualifications.
The project is offering 61.6 acres of land and an existing 967,000 square feet of existing buildings in varying conditions.
“The mutual goal of the City and CMSD is for the structures to be adaptively re-used,” said a City of Cleveland spokesperson through email. “The city and CMSD recognize that the physical conditions in some properties may require demolition. Those justified situations will be considered. Neither the city nor the CMSD will support the demolition of landmarked structures.”
What are the properties near?
Most of the locations are on the city’s East Side with seven sites just blocks away from the Greater Cleveland RTA HealthLine, connecting Public Square to University Circle.
“As calculated in 2018, the HealthLine delivered more than $9.5 billion in economic development along the Euclid Corridor,” writes RTA’s HealthLine “About” page. “A staggering $190 gained for every dollar spent on creating and launching the new service.
That would also put the sites near large redevelopment projects like the Warner Swasey building on East 55th and Carnegie, and a growing list of projects looking to build up home ownership and equity in Cleveland’s Hough neighborhood.
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