CLEVELAND — A long-blighted industrial property on Cleveland’s East Side is set to become part of a 37-acre development site – land that will be marketed to manufacturers as the city tries to bring jobs and prosperity back to disinvested neighborhoods.
The Site Readiness for Good Jobs Fund and its partners celebrated the start of demolition at the old National Acme Co. factory on Thursday. The complex, at the edge of the Glenville and Collinwood neighborhoods, is being razed with help from a $7.6 million state grant from a program that helps communities clean up and reposition contaminated properties.
Once home to a major machine-tool manufacturer, the National Acme building has been vacant for years. It became a dumping ground and an environmental hazard, riddled with asbestos and filled with 27,000 tons of trash.
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The city took control of the property in 2023, after the former owner lost the factory to tax foreclosure. Last year, the city handed off the complex to the Cuyahoga Land Bank, which is overseeing the $11 million demolition project using a mix of city and state funds.
Ultimately, Cleveland’s site fund will take responsibility for the roughly 15-acre property and, with partners, market it for redevelopment. The site fund, a nonprofit focused on turning dirty real estate into economic engines, also has a contract to buy 22 acres next door.
Combined, the properties are poised to become the city’s largest job-ready site.
“Today is not just about a brand-new site for good jobs to our city,” Mayor Justin Bibb said at Thursday’s event. “It’s a symbol of hope. A symbol of opportunity. And a symbol of progress, of what can happen in Cleveland when we have partners working together.”
The Bibb administration and City Council seeded the site fund with $50 million in federal pandemic-recovery money. The nonprofit is focused on filling gaps in the market by doing the tricky work of assembling and cleaning up land that private developers won’t touch.
The fund has the ambitious goal of remaking 1,000 acres and helping to create 25,000 jobs in Cleveland by 2040.
Ohio Lt. Gov. Jim Tressel joined the mayor, other public officials and economic development leaders for the ceremonial start of demolition. He described the National Acme project as part of a broader effort to prepare Ohio for the next generation of manufacturing and jobs.
“This is a long time coming,” he said, “but we’ve got to make sure that this is a home run, and that this becomes a bustling site that brings that hope, that drives that workforce, that demonstrates that work ethic and shows … what Cleveland has always been about.”
The site fund will work with real estate brokers and Team NEO, the regional arm of the state's nonprofit economic-development corporation, to pitch the property to businesses. They believe the site could support 250 jobs.
“This is a win for the region, and everybody needs to applaud this,” City Council President Blaine Griffin said.
Councilman Mike Polensek, who represents Collinwood and part of Glenville, has been pushing for action at National Acme for a decade. He described the property as one of the city’s worst examples of blight and neglect.
“I learned a long time ago, if you don’t clean up these sites … nothing is ever gonna happen,” said Polensek, who grew up two blocks away and remembers watching workers toting lunch pails walk to bustling factories.
“This is a win – a win for Cleveland. A win for our neighborhood,” he added. “We just have to multiply this and duplicate this all over.”
Councilman Anthony Hairston, who represents Glenville, echoed that.
“Today, we are making a big bet on the community,” he said. “We’re making a big bet on our neighborhood. We are making a big bet on the people who live here. And we’re making a big bet on our shared vision for economic growth.”
Brad Whitehead, the site fund’s managing director, said his small team has acquired or struck deals to buy more than 200 acres across the city over the last 18 months.
“What do we call 200 acres? A good start,” Whitehead said.
Some of those properties will be cleaned and cleared for development by the fall.
“You can do a lot of things to build a city, but unless you have sites where people can work, nothing else matters,” Whitehead said. “It is the starting point for everything that we do. … We’re turning forgotten places into opportunities.”
