Work could begin soon on a skyline-changing landmark in Cleveland if developers get their way at city hearings later this month. An angular and playful agglomeration of horizontal and vertical forms, dubbed nuCLEus, would include the city’s fourth tallest building at 647 feet high, or 54 stories.
Located at the southeast corner of East Fourth Street and Prospect Avenue, the project would be a mixed-use, mini neighborhood all its own, with apartments, offices, stores, restaurants, hotel rooms, parking garages and perhaps a few dozen condominiums squeezed onto a 3-acre site in the downtown Gateway District.
The design attempts to navigate what might be a clutter of different uses with some interesting geometry. According to renderings released Thursday, the centerpiece of nuCLEus would be a residential skyscraper whose staggered balcony articulations and square floor plate make it look a bit like a giant game of Jenga. The high-rise meets the streetscape with a parking garage and ground-floor retail. To the east sits a 200,000-square-foot office structure with a rooftop restaurant and social space, joined to the residential tower by a six-story, bridge-like building that is slated to house a hotel.
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The connecting mass would break up the skyscraper into two smaller volumes, spanning a “laneway” between the development’s larger buildings that developers Stark Enterprises and J-Dek Investments—both from the Cleveland area—hope will harbor shops and street life amid the massive development.
Stark and J-Dek bought the property in September for $26 million in a deal that also included other assets. The total project cost could be as high as $400 million, but according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Cuyahoga County has committed a $3-million loan from casino tax revenues to the project, as well as tax-increment financing and possible property-tax abatements.
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Still, the developers are banking heavily on Cleveland’s downtown comeback to continue for some time.
"We believe downtown Cleveland is in the middle of a renaissance and will need buildings of this height to meet future demands," NBBJ Partner and Lead Designer A.J. Monter told the Plain Dealer.
Lead designers NBBJ are joined by local firm Bialosky + Partners Architects on the project, which awaits public review before the Planning Commission next week and a city design review committee on Jan. 15. The developers of nuCLEus hope to begin demolition on an aging parking garage onsite as soon as city approval comes through, perhaps in time to deliver new parking for the Republican National Convention in mid-2016.