The officer tower proposed for the Market Square development. Harbor Bay Real Estate Advisors LLC, HPA Architects

CLEVELAND, Ohio – The record may not last long, but Cleveland will have special bragging rights as long as it does.

Come 2021, it appears the city will be home to the tallest timber-frame building in the U.S. - the 10-story office tower planned for the $175 million Market Square project in Ohio City.

Chicago-based Harbor Bay Real Estate Advisors LLC intends to build the tower and an adjacent 7-story, 267-unit apartment building – also timber-framed – just south of the West Side Market along West 25th Street.

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A birds-eye view of the proposed Market Square development. Harbor Bay Real Estate Advisors LLC, HPA Architects

The highly visible 3.5-acre site, now occupied by a strip shopping center and parking lot, is just south of the West Side Market and west of a Red Line rapid transit station.

The project cleared an important hurdle Feb. 15 when the city’s planning commission approved zoning that would allow 760,000 square feet of construction, including an underground garage with 560 spaces. Other city review sessions are scheduled in coming weeks.

The company, which hasn’t publicly discussed its use of timber as a structural material until recently, plans to break ground in the third quarter of this year and complete the building in spring, 2021.

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The apartment block in the Market Square development. Harbor Bay Real Estate Advisors LLC, HPA Architects

The project, which could be in a race with a 21-story timber-framed tower announced recently in Milwaukee, is worthy of note for reasons technological and aesthetic.

Countries from Japan to Canada are exploring new types of engineered wood as a structural material.

The tallest timber-frame building in the U.S., by all accounts, is Carbon12, an eight-story condominium tower in Portland OR, completed in 2018.

The tallest in the world is the University of British Columbia’s Brock Commons, an 18-story dorm completed in 2016.

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Detail of the apartment block in the Market Square development. Harbor Bay Real Estate Advisors LLC, HPA Architects

Future timber towers could dwarf those dimensions. CNN reported last year that Japanese company Sumitomo Forestry plans to build a 1,148-feet-tall timber tower in Tokyo that will be completed in 2041.

In Toronto, Sidewalk Labs, a subsidiary of Google, and Waterfront Toronto, a government agency, recently unveiled plans for a “mass-timber city” on the city’s lakefront, designed by the leading architecture firm Snohetta, and British designer Thomas Heatherwick.

Cities built of wood, from London to Chicago, have famously burned. But engineered timber, made of glued and laminated lumber, is now viewed as competitive with concrete and steel in strength and fire resistance.

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Detail of the office tower in the Market Square development. Harbor Bay Real Estate Advisors LLC, HPA Architects

Dan Whalen, a Harbor Bay director and native of Willoughby, said the 14-by-20-inch structural columns to be used in the Market Square office tower are “engineered to be as strong if not stronger than the concrete equivalent.”

The cost of timber is comparable steel or concrete for the project, he said.

Wood is also good for the climate. A widely cited study in the Journal of Sustainable Forestry held that substituting wood for other materials used in buildings and bridges could prevent 14 to 31 percent of global carbon emissions.

Building codes in U.S. cities are evolving along with adoption of the new/old material. Whelan said Cleveland’s fire and building departments cleared Market Square for construction after extensive discussion.

“Our building will be built in excess of current code requirements,” Whelan said.

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Detail of the office tower in the Market Square development. Harbor Bay Real Estate Advisors LLC, HPA Architects

Aesthetically speaking, timber may provide greater opportunities for architectural expression than other techniques now popular in Cleveland and other cities.

Recently completed low-rise apartments in Cleveland built of wood or metal studs atop first-floor structures of steel or concrete have facades that often lack depth or texture.

Early renderings for Market Square show that on both the apartment and office towers, HPA Architects of Chicago plans to expose structural columns and beams, rather than conceal them behind facades of glass or metal.

Whalen said the columns and beams, creating grid patterns in various rhythms, would be sheathed with metal.

Nevertheless, it should be clear that they’re part of the skeletal system that holds the buildings up.

On the office tower, expansive windows would be set back from the outer face of the columns and beams, creating a façade with sculptural depth and shadows.

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Detail of the apartment block in the Market Square development. Harbor Bay Real Estate Advisors LLC, HPA Architects

There’s plenty to like about the design so far, although a great deal depends on how the architects refine the project as they proceed to construction drawings that will determine the buildings’ look and feel.

One disappointment – and it’s a significant one – is that on the apartment building, the architects and developer have chosen to wrap storefronts with imitation classical arches and columns, resembling a slice of the Crocker Park lifestyle center in Westlake.

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Detail of the apartment block in the Market Square development. Harbor Bay Real Estate Advisors LLC, HPA Architects

They’ve also decided to enclose the northwest corner of the building – a retail space opposite the West Side Market – in sheer glass facades akin to those of an Apple store, Whalen said.One reason for the discontinuities is that the ground floor of the apartment building will be framed in reinforced concrete.Masonry for the faux-classical storefronts would include weathered and recycled Chicago brick. That sounds interesting. er glass facades akin to those of an Apple store, Whalen said.

One reason for the discontinuities is that the ground floor of the apartment building will be framed in reinforced concrete.

Masonry for the faux-classical storefronts would include weathered and recycled Chicago brick. That sounds interesting.

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Detail of the apartment block in the Market Square development. Harbor Bay Real Estate Advisors LLC, HPA Architects

It would be preferable however to see how HPA would treat all the storefronts by expressing the rhythm and dimensions of the structural system – whether concrete or wood - as it meets the ground.

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Detail of the office tower in the Market Square development. Harbor Bay Real Estate Advisors LLC, HPA Architects

On the office building, the ground floor architecture looks more honest. The wood columns would be sheathed at the lower level in Corten steel, a ruggedly beautiful material that forms a protective coating of rust.

Despite the covering, they would be visible and expressed as part of the structure holding up the entire building. The developer and architects might consider something similar for the apartment building, rather than glued-on classical details.

The Market Square project is close to contributing to Cleveland’s architectural history in a meaningful way. It would be even better to see the design follow through on all the implications of the structural material that makes the project so significant.

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