Designs for Flats office building and hotel get approval from Cleveland review board

By Michelle Jarboe, The Plain Dealer

January 14, 2010, 1:30PM

Flats office from West 10th and Main.jpg

FORUM Architectural Services LLCA rendering of the planned Ernst & Young office building and hotel looking from West 10th Street and Main Avenue in the Flats East Bank project in downtown Cleveland. The city's Landmarks Commission reviewed and approved designs for the buildings today.

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A Cleveland city review board approved designs today for an office building and hotel on the east bank of the Flats, where construction could start in the spring.

Members of the Flats East Bank development team presented new images of the project to the city's Landmarks Commission, which weighs in on landmark buildings and historic districts. The $270 million first phase of the Flats project centers on property between West 10th and West Ninth streets and Front Street and Main Avenue, in the Historic Warehouse District. That block will hold an office building and hotel, a fitness center, stores and parking.

Architect Denver Brooker described the office building and hotel as creating a transition between the Warehouse District and the Flats, "connecting to the past and nodding to the future." The first phase of the Flats plan calls for a boardwalk, a riverfront beach and 14 acres of public parks to the west of the buildings. But the Wolstein Group and Fairmount Properties hope eventually to build homes and more commercial buildings on parts of the site.

FORUM Architectural Services LLCA site plan showing the first phase of the Flats East Bank project in Cleveland.

Accounting firm Ernst & Young and law firm Tucker Ellis & West will occupy most of the office building, which will be clad in glass and silver metal panels. Above 18 floors of offices, the developers envision a rooftop deck, shaded by a lightweight frame wrapped in high-tech fabric.

The sloping site, which drops down toward the Cuyahoga River, will allow the developers to set the office building above three floors of parking. Portions of the parking deck's roof will become pedestrian space and a courtyard providing a view of Lake Erie. To the west, the developers have planned a hotel, faced in brick to complement nearby buildings in the Warehouse District. Stores and restaurants will line the first floor of the hotel building, and the second floor will hold a fitness center.

Developers have not announced the hotel brand, but they said today that the building is being designed for a specific occupant. The hotel and office building are scheduled to open by spring 2012.

Before construction starts, the developers must finish putting their financing in place. Most of the public money -- roughly $130 million that includes loans and grants from the state, the city and Cuyahoga County -- is in place. The Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority's board is scheduled to vote next week on more than $34 million worth of authority-issued bonds for the project.

Now the developers are looking to the private sector.

"Our early efforts in the private capital raising have gone extremely well," said Adam Fishman of Fairmount Properties, which is developing the project with Scott and Iris Wolstein. "While the market continues to be disjointed and difficult, our successes are a direct result of the terrific sponsorship of the Wolstein family, the terrific public-private partnership we've been able to carve out, and the anchor tenants."

Today's approval enables the developers to secure building permits for the offices and the hotel. The Flats team must return to the commission to present plans for lighting, signs, storefronts and public spaces.