CLEVELAND — A 120-unit apartment project in Asiatown could remake the heart of the commercial district, replacing a shuttered supermarket and pitted parking lots along Payne Avenue.
But some nearby residents and business owners are pushing back on those plans. They’re worried about how dozens of new homes – and residents – will change a cultural enclave nestled at the eastern edge of Downtown Cleveland.
“This is a place where Asians – Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese – come in from 20, 30, 40 minutes away,” said Bin Zheng, who owns a nearby restaurant. “Come here, eat some local food. Go to the local supermarket they don’t have elsewhere. So this is a special neighborhood.”
Zheng and other business owners said they’d rather see more restaurants and local retailers along Payne Avenue, where a Dave’s Markets store has been sitting vacant since 2019. Instead, plans drawn up by the NRP Group, a Cleveland-based developer, show apartment buildings lining the street.
The roughly $42 million project is a partnership between NRP and MidTown Cleveland Inc., a nonprofit community development corporation representing the area.
For years, MidTown has been trying to find the right team and a viable vision for the property, which spans more than two acres between East 33rd and East 35th streets.
“Looking at this site – and the size of this site – the economics wouldn’t work to build just commercial alone,” said Ashley Shaw, MidTown’s executive director. “To be able to make a project work, we’re gonna have to have housing on top of it.”
Early plans submitted to the Ohio Housing Finance Agency show a pair of four-story apartment buildings on Payne, with parking lots tucked behind them. One building would include a roughly 3,500-square-foot retail space on the first floor. The other would house a leasing office, fitness area and community room.
An NRP executive didn’t respond to an interview request. The company typically doesn't comment on early-stage projects.
Public records show the developer recently secured key financing, in the form of federal and state tax credits for low-income housing. Shaw said most of the apartments will be earmarked for households earning roughly $40,000 to $60,000 a year.
“People that work in the service industry,” she said of potential tenants. “People that are early career, that middle-income threshold is who this housing would serve.”
MidTown is planning three community meetings to get feedback on the plans.
The first meeting will occur at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Cleveland Chinese Christian Church at 3224 Payne Ave. The other meetings are set for April 8 and June 10.
Steve Hom, the manager of the nearby Asia Plaza shopping center, doesn’t object to apartments. But he wants to see much more retail on the ground floor.
“As they’re designed right now, they don’t generate any traffic or activity at all,” he said during a phone conversation. “So basically they’re just sleepy apartment buildings in the middle of this growing retail district. It seems out of place. It seems like they should be off on a side street somewhere.”
Zheng said he’d prefer to see an Asian community center on that corner instead.
“Stay Asian,” he said of the neighborhood.
Ying Pu, the founder and editor of the Erie Chinese Journal community newspaper, has been hearing from anxious and fearful residents. But she believes new housing could bring new customers to businesses and more vitality to Asiatown’s streets. She’s open to the proposal.
“We are excited about new developments,” she wrote in a text message, “as our neighborhood has historically been ignored for too long. ... As this process moves forward, we hope that both the developer and the city will handle the project thoughtfully – ensuring a balance between economic growth and the preservation of our cultural identity.”
Shaw has heard plenty of chatter, too – some supportive, some skeptical.
“Change is scary in any neighborhood,” she said. “This would be the first development of scale in this neighborhood in a very long time, and so this could potentially change the way the neighborhood feels.”
But the status quo – an empty building marred by graffiti and tattered awnings – is dragging the whole district down.
“This was more than just the loss of a grocery store for the community,” Shaw said. “This has left a really large hole in the neighborhood.”
Dave’s announced its decision to close the Asiatown store in 2017.
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The supermarket was the family-owned company’s flagship location, on the block where founder Alex Saltzman opened a corner store in the late 1920s.
In early 2019, Dave’s replaced the store with a new market in Midtown, about 1.5 miles away. Public records show that patriarch Burt Saltzman still owns the Payne Avenue property, which is under contract to NRP.
“It was a grocery store for decades,” Shaw said, “so it served as a gathering space.”
Now the local gathering spot is a pop-up park across the street, in one of the former Dave’s parking lots.
MidTown and its partners have been decking out and programming that space for a few years now. Families play soccer there, and neighbors meet for meals. On summer evenings, there are birthday parties and cultural events.
If the apartment project moves forward, NRP will deed that land over to MidTown to make it a permanent community space, Shaw said.
For Councilwoman Stephanie Howse-Jones, that’s a huge deal.
“When we are able to hopefully activate this space, get the project fully funded, not only will we have more quality housing for our community members,” she said. “We also will have just spaces to congregate.”
She said NRP is still working with the city to close a financing gap. There’s no clear timeline for when the project, which still requires city approvals, will move forward.
The councilwoman hears the concerns about preserving Asiatown’s culture. But Howse-Jones said the community she represents is a true melting pot, with many Asian businesses but a broad mix of homeowners and renters – Asian, Black, white and Hispanic.
“When we look at the makeup on the residential side, it is a reflection of Cleveland,” she said. “And I believe that this project will go more in alignment with what we have.”
She’s convinced it’s possible to keep the neighborhood’s identity – and still grow.
“We are in desperate need of quality housing here in our community,” she said. “This is one of a multitude of different projects at a price point available to working families. … And I believe that, working together, community members will be proud for the end product.”
