One of Cleveland’s longest historic buildings is helping businesses find office space downtown

One of downtown Cleveland’s longest buildings, Post Office Plaza, also has some of the newest office space.

The coronavirus is keeping many of the more than 100,000 workers who normally come downtown out of their offices. When they return, they’ll join a growing trend in the downtown office market: turning old space into new workplaces.

Kevin Barry

The building was part of the original Terminal Tower project and was a United States Post Office from the 1930s through the 1980s before becoming office space.

Some of the old windows and signage is still represented in the lobby’s current design past the entrance off West 3rd Street.

More recent face lifts have added amenities like big conference rooms, a gym, and soft lobby seating.

Those are some of the changes that attracted companies like Terence McCarron’s OpinionRoute.

“Being in the middle of everything really allows us the opportunity to retain talent from both sides of Cleveland,” said McCarron.

McCarron says even the nicest office space on the East Side, where OpinionRoute started, couldn’t offer what they found downtown.

“You could tell that the 30-40 minute drive to the East Side from wherever they were was something they didn’t want to do every single day,” said McCarron of potential employees.

OpinionRoute is one of the many companies working remotely to stop the spread of the coronavirus but eventually, the entertainment and attractions that brought the company downtown in the first place will return.

“You can see [an interviewee’s] face light up when we talk about this location, the proximity to East 4th Street, Progressive field, Rocket Mortgage Field House, and even Ohio City,” said McCarron.

Have you ever noticed something interesting in Northeast Ohio and wondered, “Hey…what’s going on there?”

Us, too. We love learning more about what shapes the world around us -- the buildings, the spaces and the ways we move between them.

Next time you're wondering about some building, project or piece of land, send me an email at Kevin.Barry@wews.com and I'll look into it for a possible story.