Saying it is time to move the vision for the west bank of the Cuyahoga River from entertainment district to residential mixed-use district, Nautica developer Jeffrey Jacobs has unveiled a Nautica master plan calling for new towers upwards of 10 stories — with some as high as 20 — and 664 rental apartments.

The new plan would retain major features of Nautica, such as its massive former railroad powerhouse and amphitheater, but add an estimated $405 million in additional real estate development to the 22-acre riverfront site. “When we first started out, the idea was to bring young people back to the city with an entertainment district,” Jacobs said in an interview Thursday, May 5. “Now young people are excited about living in the city. We will move to a live-work-play development. We’re excited to be able to complete the painting.” To that end, Jacobs, the chairman and CEO of Jacobs Investments, said he has renamed the Nautica Entertainment District as the Nautica Waterfront District. The new master plan calls for a much denser development of the site with seven, and perhaps eight, buildings ranging from 12 stories in height near Center Street to as much as 20 stories near the Nautica boardwalk next to the river. The plan also calls for construction of three parking garages to service the development. Jacobs said an initial garage would go in near the Nautica powerhouse to serve guests of the aquarium, Windows on the River and Nautica Queen, perhaps as early as 2017. The initial garage would allow construction of buildings on parking lots near Main Avenue; the others would go in as various phases of the project go forward. An office building of as much as 187,000 square feet of work space would go in one tower and another building would house a 150-room boutique hotel. The other newly proposed buildings would be devoted to residential uses. “We will design them to be converted to (for-sale) condominiums in the future,” Jacobs said, “but I don’t think the downtown market is there yet for condos.” Jacobs acknowledged the risk of proposing a hotel at a time when the downtown hotel market is almost doubling in size, with additions of the 600-room Hilton Cleveland Downtown Convention Center Hotel and the new Kimpton and Drury hotels. However, the Windows on the River at the Powerhouse complex hosts several weddings a week, and Nautica constantly fields requests about where bridal parties and guests may stay nearby. “It’s risky, but it’s an important component to complete the mosaic of a waterfront district,” Jacobs said of the hotel. “The benefit of the hotel might not show in its books but would show up in other results in the development.”