ODOT to sell land near Progressive Field, including site considered for soccer stadium - cleveland.com

ODOT to sell land near Progressive Field, including site considered for soccer stadium - cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio — The Ohio Department of Transportation plans to sell nearly 29 acres at the southern end of downtown Cleveland, just a short walk from Progressive Field, in an area viewed for decades as a potential site for another major athletic facility.

The state bought most of the largely fallow land in 2011 to facilitate construction of the Inner Belt Bridge project. Much of the property, which stretches from Orange Avenue down into the Flats, once was part of the Norfolk Southern Corp.’s expansive railyards along the east bank of the Cuyahoga River.

ODOT recently disclosed its intentions by releasing a request for proposals, seeking an auctioneer to market and sell off the land. That document indicates that 10 parcels, totaling 28.72 acres, could be sold off separately or as a single block, depending on which approach is likely to yield the highest price.

Proposals from auctioneers are due April 23. The auction could occur in November.

“We have legal authority to look at a range of options,” said Brent Kovacs, a spokesman for ODOT in Northeast Ohio. “We are going to explore to see which is best for the taxpayer.”

It’s difficult to say what the property, which is zoned for industrial use and is cleaved by grade changes and new and reconfigured roads, might be worth.

Nine years ago, while mired in a court fight with the railroad and facing costly delays on the project to replace the failing Inner Belt Bridge, ODOT paid Norfolk Southern $29.8 million for 50 acres — much more land than the state needed for construction staging and access, at a price generally considered to be exorbitant.

Real estate experts said the state isn’t going to recoup its costs.

The ultimate price for the property will depend on what potential buyers plan to do with the land, which might be attractive for an industrial project like a distribution center, mixed-use development of some sort, government uses or an extension of the nearby Gateway District.

“The sky’s the limit on that site. The only disappointment is if it’s used for parking,” said Nathan Kelly, president and managing director of Cushman & Wakefield/Cresco Real Estate in Independence.

Kovacs wouldn’t comment on potential pricing.

But Tom Chema, who represents a group that’s been pursuing part of the site for close to two years, said the state has “a view of the value that I don’t think was particularly realistic.”

A local attorney and consultant with a deep background in ballpark and arena deals, Chema has looked at the land as a potential location for a 10,000-seat soccer stadium that could house a United Soccer League team.

In the late 1980s, the property was part of a site proposed, unsuccessfully, for a new Cleveland Browns stadium. Now the ODOT footprint is too small, and chopped up, to suit the needs of an NFL team.

But Chema said a standalone soccer stadium would require only 10 acres in an urban area, with proximity to Progressive Field, Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse and plenty of lots and garages where fans could park. A suburban or rural project, without nearby attractions and amenities, would require more property and would, in his view, be much less appealing.

“That’s, of course, not the only site you could put a stadium on,” he said of the ODOT land, “although to bunch facilities together makes an awful lot of sense.”

Chema said his group is likely to bid in the auction, though that will depend on what the auctioneer and ODOT establish as the minimum acceptable price for the real estate.

He wouldn’t say who he’s working with or elaborate on the group’s overall development vision. “These projects are delicate until you get them off the ground,” he said, ”and this one is not quite off the ground.”

The USL didn’t respond to a request for comment about its interest in Cleveland. The Florida-based organization’s professional clubs sit behind Major League Soccer, at the second and third tier of the sport in the United States. Last year, the USL launched a division focused on bringing new teams to markets with populations of 150,000 to 1 million.

Brothers Greg and Shaw Abrams, operators of Force Sports facilities in Northeast Ohio and the owners of the Cleveland Force name that harks back more than three decades to the last time the region had a professional soccer team, have been publicly linked to efforts to bring a USL club here. The brothers didn’t return phone calls about the ODOT site.

For now, the only action on the property is parking for Cleveland Indians’ employees. The Gateway Economic Development Corp. of Greater Cleveland, the nonprofit landlord for the Indians and the Cleveland Cavaliers, leases about 5.5 acres for parking lots. That lease renews yearly but can be terminated with 60 days’ notice from either party.

“It’s obviously a strategic piece of land, with all the improvements that they’ve made in and around there,” said David Browning, managing director of the CBRE Group Inc. real estate brokerage in Cleveland. “It’s an intriguing site to think about as to what the uses might be.”

But when it comes to pricing, he said, “land can only be a certain percentage of what you put into a project.”

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2020-02-29 10:00:00Z
https://www.cleveland.com/business/2020/02/odot-to-sell-land-near-progressive-field-including-site-considered-for-soccer-stadium.html

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