Open for Opportunity: Corridor attracts first wave of development

A half-dozen projects are set to rise along the Opportunity Corridor next year, stretching from East 55th Street to the rim of University Circle.

The 3-mile boulevard, which links Interstate 490 to Cleveland’s second-largest jobs hub, opened in November. It cuts through urban prairie and passes industrial relics, factories abandoned as employers and blue-collar workers trickled away over a half-century of decline.

While the Ohio Department of Transportation orchestrated the $257 million infrastructure project — the product of decades of discussion and six years of construction — the city and local nonprofits quietly amassed adjacent land. Now developers are eying some of those sites, and private property, for warehouses, business parks and apartment buildings.

“I think this is really an untold story. In many respects, people don’t really know that this work is happening,” said William Willis, the economic development manager for Burten, Bell, Carr Development Inc., a nonprofit group that serves a large expanse of the East Side.

The community development corporation has played a key role in buying up properties near East 75th and East 79th streets, in an area known as the core job zone. That footprint is where developer Weston Inc. plans to erect a 156,775-square-foot cold-storage building to capture growing demand from food producers and distributors.

Two additional projects — the city’s new police headquarters and a construction-training school — are slated for nearby blocks. Last week, city officials held a groundbreaking ceremony for the $107 million police complex, which is scheduled to open in 2026.

Across the street, a sign in front of Orlando Baking Co.’s Grand Avenue headquarters and production facility trumpets “Opportunity on the Corridor” — 30 job openings at a family-owned business that employs 336 people, almost half of them city residents.

When the company moved to the Kinsman neighborhood in 1979, Orlando was meant to be a catalyst for development in Cleveland’s so-called “forgotten triangle.” More than 40 years later, the market finally feels ripe to John Anthony Orlando, the president and CEO.

“I definitely think Opportunity Corridor is going to give people accessibility to our place now. It’s easy to get to. Just having that road out front, it seems to be safer as well,” he said.

An Orlando affiliate will operate the new cold-storage facility. And the family is toying with the idea of opening an artisan bakery next door, on land reserved for retail under the city’s East 79th Street plan. The company also owns property east of its headquarters, where an expansion might be three to five years away.

Even boosters acknowledge that the corridor is not a panacea. A new road won’t change the landscape overnight in neighborhoods grappling with poverty, poor health and crime.

“I get it. It’s always going to be controversial,” said Deb Janik, senior vice president of major projects and real estate development at the Greater Cleveland Partnership.

“But we now have a chance to reconnect these neighborhoods to the interstate system,” she said. “It connected the two largest economic engines in our community, which are downtown Cleveland and University Circle. … And while it’s not a perfect reset, because nothing’s ever perfect, it does give us a chance as a community to reinvest in these neighborhoods — and to find solutions over the next 10 to 20 years.”