Mariners_Watch_exterior_rendering.jpg

A rendering shows Mariner's Watch, a planned four-story apartment building on Detroit Avenue in Cleveland's Ohio City neighborhood. The project dovetails with neighborhood leaders' efforts to encourage dense, multifamily development along major roads while preserving smaller streets lined with single-family homes.

(Dimit Architects LLC)

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A father-son team plans to build a four-story apartment building in Cleveland's Ohio City neighborhood, where projects that stalled during the recession are stirring and proposals for hundreds of new residences are percolating.

Brian Koch, a local real estate investor, and his father have revived -- and revised -- their vision for a longtime maritime-supply site along Detroit Avenue, just east of West 32nd Street. Once slated for condominiums, the property now will become Mariner's Watch, a 62-unit apartment building with a rooftop deck and views of Lake Erie.

The project, billed as high-end apartments, adds to a wave of residential interest in Ohio City. Apartments near popular bars and restaurants are nearly full, and recent studies show the near-West Side neighborhood could support more than 1,000 additional homes.

Now planners and nonprofit groups are trying to encourage dense, multifamily projects along major roads while preserving the single-family character of smaller streets.

"We really have a vision of exclusively residential projects along Detroit Avenue between Gordon Square and West 25th Street," said Eric Wobser, executive director of the Ohio City Inc. neighborhood development group.

Koch and his father, former Charter One chairman and chief executive officer Charles "Bud" Koch, acquired nearly an acre between Detroit and Church avenues in 2006, property records show. At the time, they planned to build and sell condos. But the housing market already was souring, and the project fell dormant.

During the intervening years, Ohio City built up West 25th Street with more restaurants, bars and small retailers. Apartment occupancy skyrocketed. With lenders' relative willingness to finance rental projects -- and lingering challenges in the condo market -- apartments became the logical choice along Detroit.

Mariner's Watch will include 33 one-bedroom and 29 two-bedroom apartments, with rents starting at $975 and $1,239, respectively. Those rents, at $1.42 per square foot, top what competing properties are charging by roughly $100 per month, according to Brian Koch's market studies.

The project will include a rooftop gym, home theater and demonstration kitchen for tastings and events. Plans show 62 indoor parking spaces and a small visitor lot.

A rendering shows an apartment at the Mariner's Watch project. The apartments will replace an empty warehouse that used to hold yachting equipment and supplies.

Brian Koch would not provide the total cost of the project, beyond saying it will be "in excess of $5 million." Other than tax abatement, a given for new residential projects in the city, he isn't asking for public funding.

"We are doing it the old-fashioned way, without any concessions from a public entity," he said. "So taxpayers don't have to feel bad about it."

Demolition of the empty warehouse on the property could start within weeks. Construction might be finished in mid-2014.

Between some small for-sale projects, well-publicized rental deals and recent land transfers in the neighborhood, it's clear several hundred townhouses and apartments could crop up in Ohio City during the next few years.

Rick Foran and Chris Smythe are close to starting construction on 70 apartments and commercial space in a cluster of historic buildings on West 25th. Bluewater Capital Partners, a local investor group, won state tax credits last year to turn the former West Side Community House on Bridge Avenue into apartments and a cafe.

Tom Gillespie could start work this year on another small apartment project, the Jay Hotel on Jay Avenue. At Detroit and West 29th Street, Graham Veysey is gutting and rehabbing a dilapidated apartment building for new residents and retailers.

Bar-and-restaurant owner Sam McNulty recently bought property on Abbey Avenue for a small townhouse development, where he plans to live. Construction could start this summer.

Developers including Andrew Brickman, who has built townhouses in University Circle, Rocky River and Lakewood, are negotiating deals and buying up nearby land for residential projects.

And a conceptual plan unveiled last week for the Market Plaza shopping center site, at West 25th and Lorain Avenue, shows 200 apartments over ground-floor retail. The plan, which centers on the nearby Greater Regional Transit Authority train station, also calls for townhouses on Columbus Road.

There is not a developer associated with that plan.

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