Industrial Revival on Coit Rd?

National Acme Corp. had a few plants and a stockroom here in Cleveland all the way into the 1990s. Once the 2000s arrived, Acme transferred the 131st Street plant to a realty holding company (named Acme Realty). The county land bank has owned the 131st street plant since 2024, but the plant has been abandoned since at least 2019 (per the County auditor). We are letting the huge conglomerate of National Acme off the hook after abandoning Cleveland residents. They were consolidating their market for many years and when they got too big to survive the market collapse, they have been turned out by vulture capitalists. Acme went the way of Sears/Kmart and you cannot convince me otherwise.

This property sat unused for 5 years, wasting away, and now the county land bank gets to sell it to friends of theirs for pennies on the dollar. They got this property for a song and a dance. It will now be demoed and sold to a developer (no doubt to a large scale developer instead of helping a local developer on their feet) so they can claim they are bringing manufacturing back to Cleveland. Guess what? A 15 acre lot that has decayed along with the surrounding area for at-least 24 years (when the property was transferred from the working company to a real estate holding company) will not get any industrial interest. If the industrial interest was there, the manufacturing would be built somewhere that does not require brownsite remediation. Instead, the area will continue to decay until someone rich enough turn their eye to the area sees the opportunity to displace the old citizens for a new, higher income group.

Here is what the future entails for this area: more decay until the 5-over-1s start showing up. After the first 5 or so apartment buildings go up, than the Whole Foods will move into the area. A bunch of recreational shops and/or overly priced restaurants will go in. The area will be a center of commerce surrounded by people who cannot afford to utilize the services. That is when the policing will pick up on the area. The new business owners do not feel safe and start spending more on cops in the area. They are now there to protect and serve the property. Tale as old as urbanism.

This project accompanies another to raze the former County Juvenile Court Building that sits next to I-90. What if we were able to build public housing here? Instead you can expect it to be turned either into a park/greenspace for the highway, or, it will be demolished and then sold to a developer for pennies so they may build more 5-over-1s as they prepare to "recolonize" east of I-90.

This inorganic way of "revitalizing" begs the question: revitalized for whom?