Tremont is on Fire Adding New Apartments

The article below is from Crain's Cleveland Business by Jay Miller

The Tremont neighborhood may soon get its first new apartment building.

A zoning change approved Aug. 16 by Cleveland City Council will allow developer Mike Tricarichi to build the first multistory, market-rate apartment building in the West Side neighborhood in anyone's memory. It will be at the southwest corner of Fairfield Avenue and West 11th Street.

"I think it's going to be a big success," said David Sharkey, president of Progressive Urban Real Estate. "It changes the whole face of the neighborhood."

Ralph McGreevy, executive vice president of the Northeast Ohio Apartment Association, a trade group, agreed, saying, "I think Tremont has been and has stayed hot as fire. Do I think it can absorb 75 units? Easily."

Tricarichi didn't not return several phone calls seeking comment. But architect Steve Ciciretto described a 75-unit, four-story building with parking underneath on a handful of vacant residential lots assembled by Tricarichi. A drawing submitted to the Cleveland City Planning Commission calls the building "11th & Fairfield."

Tricarichi purchased six residential lots in 2008 for $425,000. An earlier attempt at commercial redevelopment of this corner of Tremont failed in the mid-1990s when investors in what was to be "Greek Town" dropped out in part because of neighborhood opposition, according to a report in The Plain Dealer. Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church towers over the neighborhood.

Ciciretto said Tricarichi wasn't sure he had a winner.

"A few years ago, Mike said he couldn't give that land away, and now it's hot," he said. "Sometimes you're lucky when you can't give it away."

Nearly all new housing in Tremont has been modern, three-story row houses, both for sale and for rent. That's partly because of a lack of large chunks of land and because of height restrictions in the zoning code, dating from an era of traditional, wood-frame, single-family and two-family homes.

The only multistory apartment developments in recent years have been rehabs. The first was Tremont Place Lofts, the former Union Gospel Press building on Jefferson Avenue developed by a group led by Akron general contractor Myrl Roberts. It opened in 2009 with 102 units. Rents there now range from $1,200 a month for one-bedroom apartments to $2,000 a month for the larger two-bedroom units.

Most recently, Sustainable Community Associates developed two apartment buildings. The Oberlin developer turned the former Fairmount Creamery building on West 17th Street, built in 1930, into 30 apartment units in 2014. More recently, it built the 1895 Wagner Awning building on Scranton Avenue, which opened last November with 50 apartment units. A one-bedroom unit at Fairmount Creamery is listed at $1,350. At Wagner Awning, rents start for one bedroom in the $1,000-a-month range.

"When you look at Fairmount Creamery and Wagner Awning, they filled up quickly," Sharkey said. "Is this a trend? Probably."

The housing market in Tremont has been brisk.

Matt Moss, director of housing and economic development for the Tremont West Development Corp., the area's nonprofit community development corporation, said 237 units of new housing popped up on his radar in the 12 months ending March 31. Some are single-family homes, and others are for-sale or for-rent row houses.

Typical is Catania Court on Marquardt, where a ribbon was cut in July on what is for now five town homes developed by Cleveland Bricks. Those three-bedroom homes, between 1,800 and 2,200 square feet, are on the market for between $423,000 and $499,000.