CLEVELAND HEIGHTS, Ohio — Cleveland Heights officials are cheering a breakthrough at Severance Town Center, a sprawling shopping center that’s been decaying for more than a decade.
A new development group is stepping in to shape the future of the property, roughly 40 acres in the heart of the East Side suburb. MPACT Collective, based in New York, has formed a joint venture with Namdar Realty Group, which has owned Severance since 2016.
MPACT will play the role of master developer, coming up with an idea and working to make it a reality. That process will include navigating city approval processes, such as rezoning; coordinating with existing tenants; and soliciting feedback from residents.
“If we work at this together, I’m super confident that we can get something done,” said Ryan Porter, MPACT’s managing partner. “It’s gonna take time. And people will have to be patient. But I believe that, together, we can make some great things happen.”
Severance, a former shopping mall turned big-box retail center, is the city’s largest business district. It’s also one of Cleveland Heights’s biggest challenges.
Now, after years of complaints and talks, Mayor Kahlil Seren is ready for action.
“The control is now shifting,” said Seren, who took office in 2022. “And now we need to take advantage of it.”
The city announced the deal between Namdar and MPACT on Thursday afternoon in an email newsletter to residents.
But there won’t be shovels in the ground anytime soon. And it’s too early to say what a remade Severance might look like.
“The first step is just to get people excited," Seren said.
On Thursday morning, he stood on the pool deck at the Ascent at Top of the Hill, a new apartment building a few miles from Severance. It was a hopeful perch for a conversation about ways the city can revive itself - and be a bigger draw for people coming from downtown and nearby University Circle.
"I think it's time for Cleveland Heights to sort of restore itself as a preeminent suburb of our central city," Seren said. "And Severance is a step in that direction."
When it opened in 1963, Severance was the first enclosed mall in Ohio - and one of the first in the nation. In the 1980s, a major remodeling turned the property inside-out, with most of the stores accessible from a sea of parking.
Namdar stepped in 8 years ago, buying Severance after a foreclosure. At the time, Walmart had left, and the center was 40% vacant. Since then, many other tenants have trickled out, leaving blank storefronts and a shuttered movie theater.
"Every time you come, there are fewer stores. And there are fewer people," said Larry Nowak, a 79-year-old Cleveland Heights resident who leads a community group advocating for change. "And then there are no stores. And no people."
A New York-based bargain hunter, Namdar is best known for sitting on dying malls and, in some cases, selling them off in pieces. The company owned Midway Mall in Elyria until last year, when the Lorain County Port Authority bought the property to get it into the hands of a developer.
"Everybody has an opinion of Namdar,” Seren said. “Everybody in Cleveland Heights generally has a negative opinion of Namdar. And that’s based on their business model. Their business model is one that, from our perspective, does very little to advance community in Cleveland Heights.”
The joint venture with MPACT isn’t a sale. But it puts a new company, with a different business model, out front. MPACT has experience with large, mixed-use projects, downtown revitalization and redevelopment deals that require working closely with cities.
Severance would be the company’s first mall makeover. Porter said the MPACT is working with Namdar on one other project, involving a smaller retail center on Long Island.
Porter said he started looking at Cleveland Heights because of a previous relationship with Eric Zamft, the city’s planning director. Zamft moved here from New York in 2021.
“The fact that there was already a relationship there and that there was a will, seemingly, by the city and by the community to see this site become something new … we thought that that was something that we should focus on and target, out of all the opportunities that Namdar has,” Porter said.
David Saltzman, vice president at Dave's Markets, greeted the news with enthusiasm on Thursday. The family-owned supermarket is an anchor tenant at the center and plans to stick around.
"Something that's sustainable would be great," he said of eventual development. "Residential would be great. But I'm certainly not the expert in real estate matters.
"I think whatever the reinvestment is," he added, "it will be positive for Cleveland Heights - and the whole surrounding area."
Nowak, who has lived in the city for decades, said he'd love to see new buildings with single-floor living for aging homeowners; health and education uses to complement the MetroHealth System's growing campus at the edge of the property; smaller retailers; and a large park.
He and other residents have come up with a proposal - one of many concepts MPACT might have to sift through in the coming months.
"We want to create something that has value, both to the community and financial value to the developers," Seren said. "And we want something that is sustainable long-term."
The mayor grew up in the East Side suburbs. He recalls going to movies and shopping at a center that's long gone.
"Remembering it from my childhood, I know we can never go back there," he said. "But we can create something else that is beautiful. That is valuable. And that enhances all of our lives."
