Cleveland reached another milestone Thursday in its long march toward creating a more beautiful Lake Erie waterfront with better connections to downtown.
The nonprofit North Coast Waterfront Development Corp. announced the selection of Brecksville-based DiGeronimo Development as master developer of 50 acres on the lakefront split between parking lots on Dock 32 west of North Coast Harbor and land now occupied by the city-owned Huntington Bank Field, home, for now, of the NFL Browns.
Under a recent agreement with Haslam Sports Group, the Browns will move to a new covered stadium in Brook Park by 2029 and pay the city $100 million for costs, including demolishing the lakefront stadium, freeing the site for new development.
Scott Skinner, executive director of the waterfront development corporation, said DiGeronimo will work with the city and other potential development partners to build new housing, retail, hotels, public spaces, a food hall or other restaurant options and an indoor/outdoor music venue with plus-or-minus 10,000 seats for ticketed and free public events. Thursday’s announcement marked the first time the music venue has been mentioned as part of the project. Skinner said it could occupy part of the current stadium site.
Why DiGeronimo
The waterfront development corporation, created by the city two years ago and authorized by it to hire a developer and guide private development and public spaces on the lakefront acreage, chose DiGeronimo from 18 firms that responded to a request for qualifications issued earlier this year. Digeronimo’s companies include Independence Excavating and Independence Construction.
“DiGeronimo has the capability, capacity, and balance sheet, as well as the talent to be the lead developer for this project,’’ Skinner said in an interview before the announcement.
The announcement said that DiGeronimo is currently leading “more than $550 million in active development in Northeast Ohio and manages $1.1 billion in assets.’’
The firm’s projects include the Gateway North mixed-use housing and retail complex at John Carroll University in University Heights; the expansion of the CrossCountry Mortgage Campus, a mixed-use development next to the Cleveland Browns headquarters and practice facility in Berea; and “Canvas,’’ a residential development in the Valor Acres development in Brecksville.
Skinner said the city and the development corporation hope to complete a full set of agreements with DeGeronimo within six to nine months, enabling their joint work to proceed.
The agreements will include a Community Benefits Agreement with the city that will include providing opportunities for minority and female-owned and small businesses.
Laying groundwork for growth
Cleveland has failed numerous times over the past century to realize the full potential of its downtown lakefront, but Skinner said, “We are as close as the city's ever been to realizing the transformative downtown lakefront that it wants to achieve.’’
Over the past four years, it has developed extensive plans for new infrastructure including a “lakefront connector’’ to bridge the Ohio 2 Shoreway and lakefront rail lines. For decades, the highway and rail lines have separated downtown from lakefront attractions built in the 1990s, including the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Great Lakes Science Center and the football stadium.
The city and the North Coast Waterfront Development Corporation, meanwhile, have raised $150 million in federal and state money to help pay for $284 million in new lakefront infrastructure, including the connector bridge and a revision of the Shoreway designed to slim it down and slow it to 35 mph. Additional funds will be leveraged by a new downtown tax increment financing district established by the city last year.
Jessica Trivisonno, Cleveland’s senior advisor for major projects, said the city hopes to select a design-build team for the infrastructure, including the lakefront connector, by the second or third quarter of 2026.
The city will coordinate that work with a new planning firm to be hired by Skinner’s organization to work with it and DiGeronimo to refine plans for the 50-acre development zone that need updating because the Browns are leaving the lakefront.
“The announcement of DiGeronimo as the master developer is a really important step as we move from lakefront visioning and almost century of planning for the lakefront into implementation,’’ Trivisonno said.
Skinner said that work on the lakefront connector and Shoreway must begin by late 2027 to meet the terms of the federal grant, but the post-2029 demolition of the stadium will have an impact on the rest of the development zone.
“We will work with DiGeronimo and any other developers who are interested in building on the northern portion of the site before the stadium's demo’d,” he said. “But, realistically, you're not going to see a lot of development down there until the stadium is demolished.’’
Other important groundwork includes discussions between the city and the North Coast development corporation over unifying a patchwork of lakefront land leases with differing terms to create a single new baseline for development that will facilitate project financing. The new leases could start, for example, with a 75-year term followed by two 50-year extensions, Skinner said.
The leases are needed because the downtown lakefront is on landfill and the state of Ohio owns the lake bottom. All surface development requires a submerged land lease held by the city and sub-leased or assigned to developers, Skinner said.
The legal fight over the past year between Cleveland and Haslam Sports Group over whether the Browns could move to Brook Park caused delays and uncertainties in the city’s lakefront planning, Skinner said.
Nevertheless, he said, “I do not think we could have asked to be in a better scenario right now, acknowledging there is a lot more work left to do.’’
He added, “I am enthusiastic and happy with the work we've done in the last 20 months, and I'm eager to start the next chapter.’’
