Centennial Plan for Huntington Building Wins Cleveland Planning Commission Approval
Stan Bullard, Crain's
Millennia Cos. of Cleveland won final approval Friday, Aug. 6, from the Cleveland City Planning Commission for its conversion of the massive one-time Huntington Building, at 925 Euclid Ave., into apartments with renovated and repurposed bank rotundas and public spaces.
Technically, the approval OKs exterior work on the 21-story building with more than a million square feet of space within its ornate exterior. As city planners unanimously approved the designs by Sandvick Architects of Cleveland, they required the developer to bring designs back later for signage and other minor details.
The plans also are going through internal reviews by the city's building department, which needs to approve them before the project will proceed.
Tom Mignogna, senior tax credit housing developer at Millennia, called the approval "another step in the process" of readying what's now a $500 million project in downtown Cleveland. Such designs help finalize construction costs and are essential to closing financing for such projects.
The team working on the so-called "Centennial" project hopes to close the financial package for it and begin construction by the end of this year.
About 10 sources of funds are being tapped to renovate and repurpose the building, Mignogna said.
In a change from prior plans, Millennia plans to do the entire project at once rather than in two phases.
"The lenders and investors are more comfortable with that," he said, "and so are we. There's no reason the entire building cannot be done at once."
Most of the building will be devoted to 848 units of affordable housing, using low-income tax credits and a bond issue by the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority. Former rotundas will become a museum space and a restaurant.
Peter Ketter, historic preservation director, and Karen Borland, an architect at Sandvick, said the exterior preservation work will be devoted mostly to repairing the exterior with similar materials.
"It's important for the city and the public to be able to enjoy this building again," Ketter said of the structure that was closed several years ago.
According to Cuyahoga County records, the project received a $35 million loan from Deutsche Bank, which it used to replace a prior $32 million loan from Gamma Real Estate Capital of New York City that a prior developer had used to buy the building.
Mignogna said Gamma wanted to be replaced after four years because the original borrower is no longer in the project and because of changes in the scope of the project.
Millennia is the housing empire of developer Frank Sinito, and has offices at the Sinito-owned Key Tower.