LORAIN COUNTY, Ohio — The Midway Mall may be getting an upgrade. On Tuesday during the State of the City address, City of Elyria Mayor Frank Whitfield shared a vision for the area, with a focus on tenants in the health and wellness and light industrial spaces.
“I grew up going to this mall as many Elyrians have, but through years of retail changing and decay there, it is time for us to enter a new journey in terms of Midway Mall,” the mayor said during the address.
Whitfield described potential plans to focus the area on health and wellness and industrial innovation, coining the project the “Hawaii Park Project,” according to the presentation featured during the address.
“Transform it into a health and wellness and industrial innovation park that will have medical, health and wellness, and light industrial i.e. smart manufacturing tenants,” he said.
This would mean that instead of having a number of smaller retail tenants in the 700,000 square feet available, the project would feature “less than 10 major tenants” who would be in the medical space or light industrial and smart manufacturing space, according to the mayor.
The city is hoping their anchor tenant for the project will be Cleveland Clinic, who Whitfield said the city has been in talks with. Dawn Calvert, Director of Economic Transformation & Business Services for the City of Elyria, said they are optimistic these discussions with the Clinic will go forward.
In a statement, Cleveland Clinic told 3News, "We are in discussions with the City of Elyria to potentially provide additional healthcare services to the Elyria and Lorain County communities. At this time, we do not have additional information to share."
Calvert said the city is hoping for “significant construction progress” at the mall site by the end of the year, and that they are working on an aggressive timeline.
*Editor's Note: The video in the player above is from a previous report.
