Can Shaker Square’s rescuers come up with compelling new vision for a struggling Cleveland landmark?
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Can Shaker Square’s rescuers come up with compelling new vision for a struggling Cleveland landmark? - Cleveland.com
Shaker Square was the latest word in upscale urban innovation when it opened in 1929 as one of America’s first automobile- and transit-oriented shopping centers.
Built by the Van Sweringen brothers, the tycoons who went bust in the Depression, the square featured Georgian Revival-style buildings wrapped in an octagon around a five-acre central landscape. The “square” is bisected by a rapid transit line connecting the suburb of Shaker Heights to the east, and Terminal Tower downtown, to the west, both of which the brothers also built.
Six months in, Shaker Square’s new owners make plan to spend millions fixing up property - The Land
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Six months in, Shaker Square’s new owners make plan to spend millions fixing up property - The Land
The new nonprofit owners of Shaker Square have completed a capital needs assessment of the property, and it calls for investing more than $7 million into the complex, which faced foreclosure last year. Cleveland Neighborhood Progress and Burten Bell Carr Inc. bought the property from The Coral Company in August for $11 million with help from the city of Cleveland. Since then, they have been meeting with merchants, doing repairs, and completing an assessment of improvements to the property.
Shaker Square’s new owners hit the roof with capital needs assessment - Cleveland.com
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Shaker Square’s new owners hit the roof with capital needs assessment - Cleveland.com
With an assessment of capital needs that could exceed $10 million, the new owners of Shaker Square have now expanded their priority checklist beyond three original items.
In no specific order, those were “roofs, roofs and roofs,” consultant Terri Hamilton Brown told the Shaker Square Alliance last year as the capital needs assessment was still being compiled.
Those replacements will still top the list, although the priorities will also include facade improvements, electrical and HVAC upgrades, lighting, parking lots and awnings, Burten Bell Carr Development Executive Director Joy Johnson said in a recent update to the Shaker Square Alliance.
Shaker Square sold to local non-profits; improvements planned while group mulls future - WKYC
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Shaker Square sold to local non-profits; improvements planned while group mulls future - WKYC
Shaker Square, the historic retail center on Cleveland’s east side that has been in foreclosure limbo for over a year, is now officially under new ownership.
Community development non-profit Cleveland Neighborhood Progress, with its real estate subsidiary New Village Corporation and collaboration with Burten Bell Carr Development, has completed an $11 million purchase of the property, opening the way for maintenance improvements and keeping the historic landmark in local control.