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Luxury Apartments Slated for Richmond Town Square

An artist's rendering of the future Belle Oaks development in Richmond Heights. [DealPoint Merrill]
An artist's rendering of the future Belle Oaks development in Richmond Heights.

The vacant Sears at Richmond Town Square is on its way out and apartments and retail are on the way in, along with a new name: Belle Oaks at Richmond.

The mixed-use development will sit along Richmond Road, north of the mall itself. California-based developers DealPoint Merrill started planning the project in 2018, about a year after buying the former Macy’s building and converting it to a self-service storage facility.

Once completed, Belle Oaks will include six buildings with 375 high-end apartments. Rents are projected to range from $1,400 for a one-bedroom/one-bath unit to $1,800 apartments with two bedrooms and baths. A three-and-a-half acre park will sit between the east and west sides of the complex, and a community center with a pool and tennis courts are also planned. Two of the buildings will contain retail, says Paul Deutsch, a principal with Bialosky Cleveland architectural and design company and the lead architect on the project. He says Belle Oaks will be a scaled-down version of Crocker Park in Westlake, which Bialosky also designed.

“From a residential standpoint, (Belle Oaks)… is closer Crocker Park, but there’s no office component to it," Deutsch says. "There is a retail component but nowhere to the degree of what was done at Crocker Park."

Developers plan to market the complex to Millennials as well as to Baby Boomers, according to project documents. They have an eye on folks already living in the suburbs who want an alternative to the older apartment complexes already in the city.

“A lot of the multi-family housing stock in Richmond Heights is aging,” Deutsch says. “Bringing brand new housing built to modern standards is going to attract people from elsewhere and also keep people in Richmond Heights who want to stay there, who no longer want to own a home.

The city’s architectural review board will consider plans for complex on July 15.