Severance Center Redevelopment
As your Council member, I will advocate for our City to proceed with assertiveness and urgency to make progress toward a forward-thinking, sustainable, inclusive redevelopment of Severance Center that reflects residents’ needs and input.
Severance Center. What was once a bustling commercial magnet in the heart of Cleveland Heights has been languishing and declining for decades. Now Severance Center is largely a sea of crumbling, underutilized asphalt surrounding a dated shopping center that is mostly vacant.
We once had high hopes for Severance Center. With 57 acres within the inner-ring road, the site is full of potential. But, despite the City pouring valuable time and resources into RFPs (like the one issued in June 2019), we have not been able to motivate the current owner of the property, Namdar Realty, to invest in revitalizing it or to sell it as a whole so the City can find someone who will.
Namdar Realty owns over a hundred retail properties, including 61 shopping malls and 48 open-air retail (and even more mixed-use, commercial, and residential). Always on the lookout for commercial rental properties in or near foreclosure that can be purchased cheaply (Namdar bought Severance for only $10.5 million — in cash — at a county auction after the previous owner defaulted on their mortgage and the property went into foreclosure), they maintain their properties minimally, if at all, and do not appear to be interested in capital investments that renovate and modernize.
As long as Namdar makes more money from Severance Center than it is paying to hold onto it (taxes, fees, etc.), they’re likely not going to do anything with it besides sell it piecemeal to others. (In 2017 Namdar offered the Home Depot site for sale for $15 million after securing a 15-year ground-lease arrangement with Home Depot.) The result for Cleveland Heights if this property is sold in bits and pieces is more stakeholders, more obstacles, and more complications in moving forward with a cohesive vision for Severance and its future development.
I am committed to using my position on Council and as a leader in my community to promote the development of Severance Center into a thriving, forward-thinking, sustainable city center, accessible for all residents of Cleveland Heights.
I will encourage the mayor and Council to prioritize the transformation of Severance Center. A visionary, sustainable, and inclusive development will attract new residents, create jobs, and generate increased tax revenue that will benefit the entire city. I will advocate for the administration to enforce applicable codes that Namdar is currently violating in its neglect of the Severance property. Further, I will work toward developing and passing an ordinance that prevents Severance’s property owner from selling off parcels of the property.
Further, because I believe that our City’s plans are made stronger by incorporating meaningful and substantive input from our community’s residents every step of the way, I will continue to advocate for the mayor and Council to work cooperatively with interested citizens, including the Severance Action Group (SAG), to help create a strong redevelopment plan and to identify strategies for overcoming obstacles and making that plan possible. The Department of Planning and Development should be encouraged to work collaboratively with citizen leaders throughout this process.
Finally, our City government must organize thoughtful outreach efforts, with multiple avenues for gathering citizen input and feedback, to best understand our residents’ concerns, ideas, and needs when it comes to the future of Severance Center.
I want Severance Center to one day soon be a place where all residents and visitors feel welcome. It should be accessible, no matter your mode of transportation, and it should be a place where people can enjoy themselves, build community, and get the goods and services they want and need.
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