'Not just a project, it's a future': Central resident sees promise in Cleveland's Midline plan

The city of Cleveland and a nonprofit it created, the Site Readiness for Good Jobs Fund, hopes to develop 200 acres of mostly vacant commercial property into a new jobs center on the city's East Side. This photograph is of a building near Ashland Road and Longfellow Avenue.

CLEVELAND, Ohio — When LaRhon Wheeler moved to Cleveland’s Central neighborhood in 1973, she said it still reflected the industrial strength that once defined the area south of Euclid Avenue on the East Side.

“This neighborhood was alive. Beautiful homes lined the streets. Trees gave shade, character and a sense of pride,” Wheeler said. “It was a place where you could see a future for yourself and your family.”

She never left but the area changed. Factories closed and homes disappeared. “Opportunities became fewer,” she said of what has become a landscape littered with vacant buildings in disrepair.

Now, however, she’s back to thinking positive about the future, thanks in large part to the city’s announcement Wednesday of “The Midline” — an ambitious plan to turn more than 350 acres of mostly long-vacant industrial properties into a new jobs district.

The Midline initiative, led by the city-created nonprofit Site Readiness for Good Jobs Fund, stretches southeast from Euclid Avenue and East 55th Street to Opportunity Corridor. The effort aims to transform largely abandoned and environmentally troubled industrial land into shovel-ready sites for manufacturing, research and development, food production and other employers.

The city of Cleveland and a nonprofit it created, the Site Readiness for Good Jobs Fund, hopes to develop 200 acres of mostly vacant commercial property into a new jobs center on the city's East Side. This photograph is of a building near Ashland Road and Longfellow Avenue.

“The best companies aren’t looking for places with potential. They are looking for places that are ready,” Lydia Mihalik, director of the Ohio Department of Development, said during ceremonies on Wednesday.

A train passes behind a vacant Ashland Road building on Cleveland's East Side. The building is a 350-acre area the city of Cleveland and a nonprofit it created, the Site Readiness for Good Jobs Fund, hopes to redevelop. About 200 acres have been acquired for what is being called The Midline.

The city gave the Site Readiness fund $50 million in federal stimulus money to get started. The Cleveland Foundation kicked in another $10 million. Help has also come from the state.

The nonprofit’s work is citywide, but the Midline, where about $10 million has been spent, is its biggest single effort so far.

In less than three years, fund officials said they have assembled roughly 200 acres from a complicated patchwork of abandoned and underused properties. Counting existing businesses such as Pierre’s Ice Cream, Orlando Baking and Miceli Dairy Products, the broader Midline district totals more than 350 acres.

“The Midline is the most ambitious redevelopment project, I believe, in modern history in Cleveland,” Mayor Justin Bibb said.

The district sits between the HealthLine corridor on Euclid Avenue and Opportunity Corridor, with access to freight rail, interstate highways and public transit. Bibb said the goal is to once again create neighborhoods where residents can walk to nearby jobs.

“My grandparents came here from Alabama and Georgia to work in the auto plants, work in the steel mills,” Bibb said. “We want to make Cleveland a walk-to-work city once again.”

The goal is to create at least 1.5 million square feet of new industrial and commercial space and eventually support more than 2,500 jobs.

Bibb said Cleveland’s lack of large, “shovel-ready” industrial sites had become a recurring obstacle in economic development discussions.

Companies interested in expanding within Cleveland, particularly manufacturers, often could not find sites large enough to meet their needs, he said, pushing investment to suburbs such as Solon, Strongsville, Hudson and Bedford.

“The market right now wants something generally 10 acres or more,” said Brad Whitehead, managing director of the Site Readiness for Good Jobs Fund. “But in a legacy industrial city, it’s often 2 acres here, 3 acres there. Incredible fragmentation.”

Some cleanup work is underway or scheduled to begin soon at sites including the former U.S. Sugar Co. that closed last year, portions of the long vacant building at 7000 Central Avenue that was once home to a Hulett factory, and other spaces along Ashland Road and East 79th Street.

The nonprofit has received brownfield cleanup grants and additional federal planning support tied to transportation and workforce development programs.

Orlando Grant, who oversees community engagement and strategy development for the nonprofit, said the organization is especially focused on companies offering wages of $25 to $30 an hour.

Whitehead described the project as being “in the red zone” - a football term for when a team is within 20 yards of scoring a touchdown. He said he anticipates being able to make announcements with companies this summer or fall.

“We’re open for business,” he said. “We’re starting to build the pipeline.”

Wheeler said she hopes that means at least some of her 17 grandchildren will be able to find work and prosper in the area.

“What they are building here is not just a project, it’s a future,” Wheeler said.

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