CLEVELAND — New state funding could bring new developments and jobs to Northeast Ohio, thanks to $45 million that Ohio awarded to Cuyahoga County for brownfield remediation and to revitalize vacant and contaminated land.
For as long as anyone alive has been in the East Glenville neighborhood, the National Acme site, once a major metal manufacturer in the U.S., has been there.
“Three shifts, around the clock, thousands of people working here,” Councilman Mike Polensek said.
But for decades the once vibrant metal factory has become an abandoned, contaminated dumping site and an eyesore for the East Glenville neighborhood. When the area was added to Polensek’s ward, he was surprised to see how bad the site had become.
“It was abandoned. Full of garbage. Rats. It was just like, what is this?” he said.
“This is a former industrial park that has seen much better days,” said Richard Barga, manager for site identification and development at the Site Readiness for Good Jobs Fund. “This is far from clean at this current state.”
But Barga says change is finally on the way. The state is awarding $45 million to Cuyahoga County to allow the Cuyahoga Land Bank to clean up and revitalize seven properties. Barga and his team at the Site Readiness for Good Jobs Fund will use some of that money to tackle the former Acme site.
“Scrape everything off that we can — buildings, waste, brush, trash,” he said. “We need to have more sites as soon as possible.”
That ready-to-go land is critical to attracting new businesses to the region.
“The Intel facility outside of Columbus, that kind of took everybody by surprise and we in Northeast Ohio said, ‘Hey, we need to have sites ready to go, ready to be developed," said Adam Stalder, the Land Bank’s director of community stabilization. "People do want to invest here.”
The Cuyahoga County Land Bank will use some of the $45 million to turn three parcels on the riverfront into a mixed-use district with recreation areas, and office and retail space.
The rundown Sears at the Southland Shopping Center will be remediated and transformed into hundreds of family rental units, retail and park space. Another project would focus on demolishing the former juvenile justice center, making way for realignment of the I-90 innerbelt and improvements to the East 22nd Bridge.
Other projects include remediation and redevelopment at Memphis and Pearl, and the Sherwin Williams Research and Development Campus and the Shoreway Tower. All of the projects combined are expected to generate more than 1,000 new jobs.
“We have plenty of land it’s just, is it ready to go? We need to make sure it’s ready to go,” Stalder said.
At the former National Acme site, that involves decontamination and demolition to pave the way for economic growth, breathing new life into Cleveland’s east side.
“If you don’t clean these up nothing will ever happen. Nothing will ever happen in these neighborhoods,” Polensek said. “Just to clean up this site is going to be just uplifting for the community.”
Barga said they plan to clean up and decontaminate the Acme site in the coming months and be prepared for building demolition at the beginning of 2025.