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This East 85th Street lot is among those that Euclid will be trying to have developed.
(Frank Mecham- The News-Herald.)
The city of Euclid is announcing its plans to revitalize East 185th Street.
The area of East 185th between Pasnow and Naumann avenues and Canterbury and Rosecliff roads is made up of nine parcels of land, mostly owned by either Euclid or Cleveland.
Now, Euclid in partnership with Cleveland has announced the first phase of a project that they hope will bring in developers and businesses. According to a news release from the city, the redevelopment of the site won’t be the first time the main thoroughfare has been addressed as they spent over $12 million adapting East 185th Street to have ADA accessibility and street improvements done during 2023.
Euclid Economic Development Division Manager Callie Cripps said she hopes residents will be excited about the development. She said that during stakeholder meetings, where residents and other members of the community including business owners met, some people were hesitant at having the area developed as they want to have more inclusive public spaces.
“What we decided on was a two-prong approach,” Cripps said. “Instead of doing all the thinking and then having requests from proposals by developers and then trying to get the community to acclimate to those ideas, we decided to start with a market analysis.
“The analysis, which is a very objective approach to what this site can sustain, (will show) what’s going on in the greater region and how we can use different amenities and attractions within a certain radius to really help generate ideas for this site.”
During an activity, residents listed what they would like to have included in the development and those included ice cream shops, restaurants, bookstores and other small businesses. During the same meeting stakeholders said that they opposed dollar stores, auto parts stores, smoke shops and big box stores, among other things.
Cripps said the city wants to guide developers on what could be on the site. She said Euclid wants to give some leeway, so developers have a full understanding of what the community in the area wants and what to expect if a developer takes on part of the project.
“We want to give some flexibility to developers on the commercial space because we need to give them some leeway but also give them some guidance and expectations,” Cripps said. “One of the things that I think we are going to hold firm on is we want this to be a mixed-use site.
“We want it to incorporate commercial components on the first floor and we want to include market rate multifamily residential.”
Mixed-use housing used to be more common during the 1930s, but due to the Federal Housing Administration providing lower rates for first-time homeowners and the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944 most new housing built in the United States after that were single-family homes.
Zoning laws also restrict what can be built within sections of a city. Many cities have made mixed-use development when it includes residential spaces, be it apartment buildings or condominiums, illegal to build in a business-zoned district. Cripps said that she has been working on making sure that the code will allow mixed use in that area.
“In our department we house the zoning commissioner,” she said. “And we have been working very closely as we are a team effort and we already have a pretty solid outline of what mixed-use zoning can and should look like in regard to updating our code to allow that type of development on the site.”
She said that she wants to make sure that when the site starts to be developed that it fits into the area around it. Euclid has many low buildings with small apartments, and she wants to continue that trend.
“I think it is incorporating our past into our future is how I describe it,” Cripps said. “This isn’t going to be a high-rise tower, and I think it will have some pretty healthy height restrictions, so it doesn’t feel out of place.
“In regard to the architecture, we are going to be at the table with these conversations between developers so they can be truly authentic to this neighborhood but also being mindful that it’s new construction.”
One issue that remains is affordability. According to the US Census Bureau, 20.3% of people in Euclid live in poverty with a median gross rent of $931 between 2018 and 2022 while the per capita income is around $28,900.
That means that the average Euclid resident is paying nearly 40 percent of their annual income in rent.
“I think that will probably be the discussion that is going to come to the forum when we start to dig into the numbers,” she said. “We requested that any developers submit a ‘pro forma’ which will show their plan for rent.”
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