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Disappearing Asphalt: Cleveland’s Downtown Building Boom Is Making Parking Lots Vanish
After decades of unproductive use, surface parking lots in the city’s core are finally giving way to development.
When news broke two weeks ago that Sherwin-Williams, the world’s highest-revenue paints and coatings company and one of the largest employers in northeast Ohio, had chosen to remain headquartered in downtown Cleveland, it was continuing a recent trend.
When the company, which has has occupied the Landmark Office Towers complex since 1930, builds its new 1-million square-foot global headquarters just west of Public Square, the symbolic center of the central business district, the development will rise on the site of what is now surface parking lots.
This is just the latest example of a building boom that is taking a sea of unproductive asphalt and turning it into a renaissance of sorts for downtown Cleveland.
Filling in the gaps
Like a smile from a mouth missing several teeth, Cleveland’s central business district has spent much of the past 70 years seeing buildings razed and replaced by parking lots. As the city’s economic fates spiraled downward and local leaders leaned into urban renewal theories…
