A local developer has purchased the former Plain Dealer office building in the Superior Arts District, ending years of uncertainty about the future of a prominent piece of real estate at the eastern edge of downtown Cleveland.
Industrial Commercial Properties LLC bought the property on Wednesday, May 11, the Solon-based company confirmed. The sale does not appear yet in public records. The buyer and a representative for the seller declined to disclose the price.
Built as the headquarters of The Plain Dealer newspaper, the 235,000-square-foot office building opened in 2001. It transitioned into a multi-tenant property as the media organization trimmed its staff, pared print delivery and retooled its business model to focus on its website.
Now the building, at 1801 Superior Ave., is 80% vacant after the departures of tenants including Advance Ohio, the company that oversees Cleveland.com, and the newsroom that feeds the website and newspaper.
In mid-April, Cleveland.com reported that its newsroom was moving to temporary digs in the suburbs, at The Plain Dealer’s printing facility in Brooklyn.
The downtown office building could remain a multi-tenant property, but it also might appeal to a corporate headquarters user, said Chris Salata, ICP’s chief operating officer. The sole remaining occupant, on the fourth floor, is Step Forward, an anti-poverty agency once known as the Council for Economic Opportunities in Greater Cleveland.
“You don’t have a lot of Class A product in this market,” Salata said, referring to fairly new, top-shelf office space, “and you don’t have buildings that are as flexible as this one.”
From a foundation in industrial real estate, ICP has amassed a sprawling portfolio that includes offices, former shopping malls and mixed-use projects. The company owns other properties in Cleveland, but the four-story former Plain Dealer building is owner Chris Semarjian’s first foray into the central business district.
In a written statement, he described the building as a “world-class facility” that is well-situated as employers consider upgrading their spaces to lure white-collar workers back to offices.
“As Clevelanders, we are thrilled to be one of the agents of change for downtown as the post-pandemic office market heats up,” Austin Semarjian, ICP’s vice president of leasing and acquisitions, said in a written statement.
The property includes enough parking, in a garage and surface lots, for 800 cars. ICP plans to make major improvements to the garage, Salata said.
“They’re creative deal-makers, and there’s no doubt in my mind that they will have a lot of success filling the building,” said Rob Roe, a managing director at the JLL brokerage in Cleveland.
Roe and Joe Messina, a JLL senior managing director, marketed the building for the seller, an affiliate of the Plain Dealer Publishing Co. The listing went live in 2019, after the city of Cleveland backed away from a plan to convert the building into its new police headquarters.
Minute Men Staffing Services, based in Midtown, later put the property under contract as a potential headquarters. But that deal dissolved in early 2020. New “for sale” signs popped up along Superior in March of 2021.
“Once COVID hit, companies weren’t buying office real estate, or very, very few were,” Roe said. “And it changed the profile of the buyer from highest- and best-priced buyer — which would be a user — to a speculative purchaser or developer. Once we changed that parameter, we had four or five different groups that were pushing offers and talking to us.”
The Cuyahoga County Fiscal Office set the market value of the property at $19.5 million for the 2021 tax year. In March, though, the Plain Dealer Publishing Co. asked the Cuyahoga County Board of Revision to slash that value to $12.7 million, in a bid to reduce the property-tax bill.
That complaint is pending.
Newspaper companies across the nation have been shedding their real estate — in some cases, their most valuable asset — for more than a decade. Downtown headquarters buildings, far too large for diminished newsroom staffs, have been razed to make way for new construction or reimagined as housing and hotels.
The former Plain Dealer building anchors the western edge of a district in flux, where investors are transforming historic buildings along Superior into offices, apartments and the occasional restaurant.
CrossCountry Mortgage, a lender based in Brecksville, is set to move its headquarters to the neighborhood later this year. A cycle track, a two-way bike path buffered from traffic on Superior, is on the drawing board, with funding in place.
The Superior Arts District and the area to the south, near Cleveland State University, are experiencing a swell of public and private investment, said Mark Lammon, executive director of the nonprofit Campus District Inc. community development organization.
“CrossCountry Mortgage’s headquarters relocation and now the sale of 1801 Superior Avenue will bring hundreds of new people to the neighborhood,” he wrote in an email. “And construction of the Superior Avenue Midway will turn our district into a multi-modal hub, another reason companies are relocating to the area. … We’re excited to welcome everyone to our creative arts neighborhood.”
