Abbey Avenue apartments planned, panned

A plan for a five-story apartment building and townhouses at 1910 Abbey Ave. in Cleveland won schematic approval Friday, Jan. 21, from the Cleveland City Planning Commission.

However, the much-studied plan by city planners and neighborhood groups drew opposition from two residents from Duck Island who said they wanted parking concerns of the neighborhood to be part of the consideration of the plans.

Although Lillian Kuri, planning commission chair, thanked the two residents for sharing their concerns, the commission unanimously granted approval for the design. That means the plan will be subject to more fine-tuning before being cleared for construction. However, Kuri urged residents and city planners to undertake a broader study of parking worries in the neighborhood and concerns that new city planning guidelines may work to the detriment of adjoining residents.

Jason Petroff, a Duck Island resident, told the commission he worries that the neighborhood will suffer the “unintended consequences of the city’s urban overlay plan” because of the volume of parking created by numerous multifamily projects in the neighborhood.

Those projects include the Abbey Avenue plan, a proposal by Realife Cleveland for apartments at Columbus Road and Detroit Avenue, and redevelopment of a site facing Columbus Road that MRN Inc. of Cleveland plans to develop between Abbey and Willey avenues. The residents also said they worry about spillover parking from Waterford Apartments, rising on the opposite side of Lorain Avenue opposite West 20th Street and near Columbus.

“We’re talking about a total of 568 new housing units,” Petroff said. “We’re going from a neighborhood of 200 homes overnight.”

Michael Panzica, the principal of Panzica Development, which proposed the Abbey Apartments, told the commission, “We take the parking element of the project seriously. We want to make sure we have great parking for the project.”

David LaSalvia, who told the commission he represented the Duck Island Block Club, said the spirit of the overlay planning concept makes sense, but he wanted the commission to appreciate the neighborhood’s parking worries given the extent of multifamily projects under way.

“We have fewer accesses to main roads and the Regional Transit Authority here,” which could create more congestion than in other parts of the city, LaSalvia said. “We have concerns about our quality of life when we have so many large projects coming into our neighborhood.”

He said residents also worry about the volume of traffic that might go onto Smith Court from the Abbey Apartments.

The commission approved a request to support the idea of allowing cars exiting on Smith on the back side of the project to turn left on the wrong way of the one-way street. That would shorten the access to the West 20th side of the project, also the shortest route to Lorain Avenue. That also would limit some of the traffic going into the single-family area nearby.

However, such a decision rests with the city’s Board of Zoning Appeals, so city planners were limited to recommending the move.

Councilman Charles Slife, a commission member, told the commission that Councilman Kerry McCormack, who represents Tremont as part of Ward 3, supports the idea.

Slife, whose Ward 17 includes West Park, said as he presented a motion to adopt the plan that reducing parking pushes residents to use public transit. He said many residents erroneously believe they control parking on the municipal street in front of their homes; it’s public parking.

Matthew Moss, a city planner, said that as part of the staff’s review of the plan it noted that the site benefits from access to alternative modes of transportation, such as the Redline Greenway.

Donna Grigonis, director of neighborhood development at Tremont Development Corp. and Ohio City Inc., area community development corporations, said the parties will continue to examine parking aspects of the plan as it has already had substantial discussion of the apartment plan among the neighbors, the developer and the city.

As proposed, the current plan includes 89 parking spots for the multifamily building, which would have frontage on Abbey between West 20th, and 20 spots for 10 townhouses that are part of the project and face the side streets. The apartment building would have 132 suites of various types. The Abbey Avenue Market was located on a big part of the site until it was shut and demolished a few years ago.

DiSalvia said Duck Island residents surveyed several recent projects in Ohio City and found widespread feelings about parking shortages, including near the Intro project and the Dexter, which both benefited from the urban overlay plan.

Brandon Kline, the architect for Streetsboro builders Geis Cos., told the commission the plans have evolved through neighborhood discussions. He said exterior finishes have changed substantially. He noted the retail section of the project will be at the corner of Abbey and West 20th and that lights on the building will help to counter the darkness of nearby Abbey Park.