CLEVELAND HEIGHTS, Ohio — Housing stock, vacant buildings and their landlords — including the one at Severance Town Center — dominated a long list of questions for the city’s five mayoral hopefuls earlier this month.
Those candidates offered their respective strategies on restoring neighborhoods and business districts in decline as well as trust in City Hall during a Heights Chapter League of Women Voters (LWV) forum at the Cleveland Heights Community Center.
The top two vote-getters in the Sept. 9 primary will meet again in the November general election.
For Severance Town Center, LWV moderator Wendy Deuring noted that there have been more studies than action, at least up until about a year ago, when the city brought in a master developer.
Councilman Jim Petras said he’s grateful that Ryan Porter and MPact Collective were able to bring Namdar Real Estate to the table.
In order for redevelopment to go forward, the city needs new zoning in place,” Petras noted.
“I think this is really good leverage in trying to advocate for those things that we would like to see, since we’re the ones who are going to have to live with what’s built there,” he added.
To that end, Petras believes the city needs to be “more assertive.”
Council Vice President Davida Russell — who hosted her early “You Talk, I Listen” public forums in the old Regal theater complex before it closed — agreed that Porter has been a “blessing.”
“No one else wanted to look at Severance because of the owner — he didn’t want to talk or have anything to do with us,” Russell said.
She credited Porter with doing “all kinds of community engagement to get everyone’s input on what Severance should look like.”
“Once he puts together that plan, and we all have that shared vision, creating a housing code, we have to make sure that whatever development we put in there reflects the residents of Cleveland Heights,” Russell said.
Russell also alluded to the possibility of tax increment financing (TIF’s) and abatements “to help move that vision forward.”
Tucker Ellis attorney Laura Kingsley Hong sees at least one component missing from the proposal in the early going.
“The Severance Action Group (SAG) has a plan with some great concepts to it, including a large park,” Hong said, referring to a 4.7-acre proposal across from City Hall.
Along with excluding the park, Hong called the 10-year timeline to implement the plan “completely unacceptable.”
“The city has to control Severance and the development to make sure what residents want are actually filled — quickly and properly,” Hong said. “And the current plan does not allow for any of that.”
Former Future Heights executive director and current University Heights chief of staff Deanna Bremer Fisher said city government needs to work creatively, using all available tools at its disposal.
“Even if we don’t own all of the property in those two areas, there are things that we can and do control,” Fisher said. “That has to do with zoning and enforcing the building codes.
It also includes visioning and planning which can be worked on with residents — “while that has happened with some plans, we need some action,” Fisher added.
Almost parallel to Severance, University Heights also created a special community improvement corporation (CIC) for University Square, “specifically for that awful parking garage.
“That was the thing that got the (Bell Tower Center) project going, because it was too risky for developers to take on otherwise.
Cuyahoga County assistant prosecutor and former South Euclid Councilman Marty Gelfand remains “cautiously optimistic about the process” at Severance, having attended the crowd-sourced placemaking meetings.
“It’s a big parcel in a city that’s pretty much built-up — a lot of opportunities there,” Gelfand said.
But at the end of the day, Gelfand still sees Namdar as an absentee landlord.
“So if something works out that’s great,” Gelfand said. “If it doesn’t, in terms of housing and building, as a landlord, you’re answerable to the city and our enforcement.
“And I am going to work creatively with the law department to enforce our code.”
Noble pursuits
The LWV question about Severance was actually two-fold, with candidates also asked to weigh in on their plans for the Noble neighborhood as well.
“We have plans and we need action — we allocated a bunch of American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) money to support various neighborhoods, including Noble,” Petras said. “We need to act on disbursing that money.”
Russell noted that she legislated for an initial $2 million apiece in ARPA federal pandemic relief for the Noble and South Taylor areas as an economic “shot in the arm to boost both neighborhoods.”
That was back in 2021, with Russell adding that at least up until now, “the money has not been disbursed or used in line with what I had envisioned.”
Fisher noted that one problematic area remains the “Noble-Warrensville-Mayfield triangle,” with a considerable amount of under-developed land there.
The city owns some of that property, where Fisher pointed to a municipal “salt dome and a dump,” the latter used to store primarily yard waste.
“And that’s right at the gateway to the neighborhood,” Fisher said. “Those (municipal) functions are important but that may not be the best place for them, in order to have development in Noble.”
In walking the Noble neighborhood and meeting with voters, Hong said residents also feel city services are not being delivered to them equitably.
For that matter, “Noble needs a grocery store and a pharmacy — and we don’t need a study to do that,” Hong added.
Housing stock
On the subject of landlords with housing violations and code enforcement on both residential and commercial properties, Petras cited a fundamental flaw.
“Here in Cleveland Heights, believe it or not, if you have housing code violations, if you are an absentee landlord, you can still get your occupancy permit renewed.”
Petras finds this “ridiculous — if there is a problematic property on a street that has a bunch of violations, we should not renew them — we should use that as leverage to get those things resolved.”
With housing inspection on its way back in-house rather than outsourced, the chair of council’s Housing and Building Committee said as mayor, he would continue to eliminate “a lot of variation” in enforcement.
Russell plans to get back to stricter code enforcement.
“When you drive down the street, you do the speed limit,” she said. “When you are not keeping up your properties, we need to partner with the housing court judge to make Cleveland Heights even more beautiful than it is now.”
In the business districts, Russell said “people are leaving because the rents are high and the landlords are not keeping up the commercial properties. We need to put code violations on them.”
Fisher wants to use “a mix of carrot and stick — so that there have to be incentives like small grants or loans, as well as penalties, “which are our codes — and we need to enforce those.”
While it can be a difficult balance, Fisher believes the biggest issues across the region are with local building and housing departments.
“We are fortunate to bring that back in house, but there’s not enough staffing and training to get through all of the violations and keep up with that,” Fisher said. “We need to staff up and train that department.”
Gelfand advocates “gentle enforcement,” where “as a property owner, you get your list of citations and the city works with you to help you get it done.”
Some owners may not be able to afford to get everything done at once, “so you do what you can and get an extension, maybe some low-interest loans and grants.”
The enforcement comes in because “a lot of people just don’t do anything — they need to go to court whether they’re owner-occupiers or absentee landlords.”
Cleveland Heights has a great housing stock and needs to take care of it, Gelfand added.
“When I go door-to-door, I’m always seeing a lot of beautiful homes that people are taking great care of,” Gelfand said. “Then they’re complaining about a house down the street that looks horrible and needs to be enforced.”
Calling housing her “most important passion for the city,” Hong said that as an attorney, “enforcing housing code with landlords is pretty low-hanging fruit.”
After tracking them down, “if they’re not responsive, we need to start fining them. And if worse comes to worst, some of these properties we are going to have to take over to declare them as nuisances and push that forward.”
As for commercial properties Hong wants to assist the city’s business tenants.
“They are clamoring for more help from the landlords who are destroying the properties,” Hong said.
As a result, they can’t successfully run their businesses.
“They absolutely need to tell us what they need on the properties so we can enforce the code with our landlords.”
In addition to the LWV tape — which has already had over 3,200 views — resident and city council candidate Adam Dew, through his Dew Diligence media production company, has assembled individual interviews with each mayoral prospect.
They are available on video at his website, https://www.dewmediainc.com/dew-diligence-podcast, as well as audio versions on Spotify and Apple or “wherever you get your podcasts,” Dew added.
