A new project in Old Brooklyn aims to manage a precarious balancing act – preserving a historic 100-year-old church while also bringing modern apartments and retail space to the neighborhood.
The new Memphis-Pearl mid-rise project near the intersection of Memphis Road and Pearl Avenue would add a six-story, 74-unit apartment building to a neighborhood that hasn’t seen new residential construction like this in decades. The Cleveland Planning Commission recently approved demolition of structures around the historic St. Luke’s Church, paving the way for the project to break ground in late 2025 or 2026.
“This is the most important project in 50 years in Old Brooklyn,” Ward 13 council member Kris Harsh told the planning commission at its Dec. 6 meeting. “This is, at its heart, a preservation project. We’re trying to save a 100-year-old church and make it a centerpiece for the next 100 years.”
While most new apartment projects are led by private developers in trendy neighborhoods, this project is being spearheaded by a nonprofit community development corporation. Old Brooklyn CDC is partnering with Pearl Road United Methodist Church, which owns a portion of the property that is being developed. Over the past few years, the CDC said it has engaged more than 650 residents across four community events. Right now, the group said, there are less than 100 apartments in downtown Old Brooklyn, but with more people moving to the neighborhood, there’s an appetite for more.
“It’s a signal of change in Old Brooklyn,” Lucas Reeve, executive director of Old Brooklyn CDC, told the planning commission. “In the past few years the neighborhood has stabilized, but it’s very much in need of new investment.”
The planning commission vote is key because it represents approval of the project site plan. The next steps are to demolish three of the structures on the site – the St. Luke’s education addition, the neighboring Greenline commercial buildings, and a vacant residential structure behind the church. After that, Old Brooklyn CDC will continue to work on refining the plans, which will need to come back to the planning commission for final approval before breaking ground.
In an interview with The Land, Reeve stressed the significance of the project to Old Brooklyn. “This is ‘Main and Main’ for us,” he said. “This is our main downtown corridor. We believe this is a catalytic project that will encourage more investment in Old Brooklyn. It will stabilize the neighborhood and help set us up for the next 50 years.”
Reeve said the project is part of a bigger push to add more multi-family housing in Cleveland, thus boosting the city’s population after the crushing losses of recent decades. With residents moving to near west side neighborhoods like Ohio City and Tremont, Old Brooklyn is ripe for redevelopment. He also cited the fact that W. 25th Street is slated to get a re-do with new bus rapid transit service along the corridor, so the project will be able to boast being transit-oriented, as well.
Reeve told the planning commission that the group got a lot of pushback when it discussed tearing down the buildings, so they decided to incorporate them into the plans instead. The new apartment buildings wrap around the existing historic St. Luke’s church as well as the Pearl Road United Methodist Church. This unique feature of the project cannot be overstated, he argued.
“Many developers wouldn’t consider reuse,” he told The Land. “The church (St. Luke’s) has significant structural issues. Most developers couldn’t wrap their heads around how complex this project was.”
Reeve said the project is targeted towards middle-class residents who want to live in the neighborhood, but may be priced out of other, trendier areas. It’s not expected to displace any residents. “It’s not going to be high-end market rate apartments,” he told the planning commission. “We’re talking very much midlevel, pushing more toward workforce housing,” or housing that is targeted to workers who are typically left out of affordable housing programs.
In a followup interview, Reeve said the neighborhood needs more market-rate housing to stay competitive, satisfy demand, and entice more developers to invest in the area. “Most of the rental product (in Old Brooklyn) was primarily built during the 1950s-1970s, and unless significant improvements or renovations occurred in these buildings, these rents are going to remain at an affordable rate for the neighborhood,” he said. “Old Brooklyn truly has not seen a high density of ‘newer units’ that reflect modern day spaces and amenities in over 50 years.”
Old Brooklyn CDC is playing the role of market leader, in order to try to entice more development in the area, he said. “When there’s a lack of comparable data points in any market, that makes it difficult for private investment to secure construction financing on these types of projects, which is why OBCDC is directly trying to bring this type of product online, as quickly as possible,” Reeve said.
The median gross rent in Old Brooklyn currently is $847, since many of the properties are older and nothing new has been built, Reeves said, quoting a recent market study. This leaves room in the market, given demand, for higher-end properties to be built.
Proving this point, the neighborhood has recently begun to see additional development in the area. The developer Turn Dev is working on a 30-unit project directly across the street. And the first new townhomes in the neighborhood are being built on Stanford Avenue, Reeve said.
The site has a rich history. The very first St. Luke’s Church was built in 1860, but it burned down 40 years later. The church that’s there now was built in 1903. The Greenline buildings next door were added in 1912. In 2011, the church closed its doors for good, and in 2014, after attempts to sell it fell through, the CDC acquired it. Old Brooklyn CDC has been working ever since then to redevelop the property.
Reeve said the six-story apartment building will feature 74 apartments, including 23 studios, 42 one bedrooms, and nine two bedrooms. There will also be 3,600 square feet of amenity space, 6,500-9,600 square feet of retail space, and 6,500-9,600 square feet of community space.
The development team, which also consists of Jim Ambrose of Tipping Point Development, won a $2 million grant from the Ohio Brownfields Program to remove hazardous materials from the buildings and demolish them. The funds will be used to remove asbestos and lead from the properties before they’re torn down.
Reeve said the project is only possible because Old Brooklyn CDC is a nonprofit developer. The partnership with Pearl Road United Methodist Church, which remains open but has some unused space that will be incorporated into the project, is also key.
Planning commission chair Lillian Kuri praised the project for its unique, forward-thinking approach – even if it’s a more difficult one. “There is so much that I love about this project,” she said. “It saves what should be saved. It’s the right kind of preservation. It’s kind of a catalytic project. There’s the potential for this to become a real destination. It’s exciting.”
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