Planning Commission approves 3 new Cleveland Clinic buildings but challenges it to become a world-class place, not just a great medical center

U.S. NEWS


CLEVELAND, Ohio — The Cleveland Clinic got a pat on the back from the city’s planning commission on Friday along with a sharp critique and a plea to work harder on making itself a world-class place for city residents and visitors, not just a world-class medical center.

Members of the commission voted to grant final approval to plans for three new buildings on Friday, including the 14-story, 1 million-square-foot Neurology Institute planned for a site along the north side of Carnegie Avenue between East 89th and East 90th streets.

Plans for two new research buildings flanking East 100th Street on the north side of Cedar Avenue also received approval. The two new lab buildings are part of the Clinic’s $300 million investment in creating a $500 million “Innovation District’’ in Cleveland also supported by $200 million from the State of Ohio and JobsOhio.

The Clinic hasn’t announced what all three of the new buildings will cost to build. They’re part of a $1.3 billion investment in new capital projects announced in 2022, including the construction of new buildings and renovation of facilities in Ohio, Florida, and London, England.

The buildings are also part of a $1 billion-plus boom in healthcare construction across Northeast Ohio.

Related: UH Ahuja 2, MetroHealth’s Apex lead a near-$1 billion hospital construction boom in Northeast Ohio

Drawing criticism

The design for the Neurology Institute elicited sharp words from commission member August Fluker, an architect who lives near the Clinic. Despite his criticisms of earlier conceptual and schematic plans for the project, he said that public spaces around the large, bulky building are still poorly conceived.

Cleveland Planning Commission offers praise, criticism for three new Cleveland Clinic buildings

Renderings of the final designs for the Cleveland Clinic’s new Neurology Institute, approved Friday, June 2, 2023 by the Cleveland City Planning Commission.Hopkins Architects, Cleveland Clinic

Fluker’s comments echoed those he made last year, along with other critics, who say the Clinic’s 173-acre campus in Cleveland is a barren place devoid of street life, apart from cars bringing thousands of patients and employees there every day.

Architects from the British firm of Hopkins Architects, and the Cleveland office of Stantec, described their efforts to articulate the facades of the massive, 14-story, 239-foot-tall building, which will stand close to Carnegie Avenue in an area where Clinic buildings have created a canyon effect with heavy traffic where it’s uncomfortable to walk.

Cleveland Clinic needs to work harder to embrace the surrounding city, reverse erasure of neighborhood connections

Scenes of the Cleveland Clinic’s campus viewed from sidewalks through the 165-acre facility.Steven Litt, cleveland.com

The new building will have glassy facades framed with “champagne-colored’’ metal panels. On the 6th floor, two thick towers rising from the building’s large, unified base will be set back slightly from the lower part of the structure, in an effort to reduce its apparent mass.

Landscaping around the base of the building will include greenery, canopies, and seating, although Fluker said he couldn’t understand why anyone would sit on a bench set near Carnegie, one of the city’s busiest arteries.

“I give you credit for trying to create some spaces people might utilize,’’ he told the architects. Referencing buildings at the Clinic that are surrounded by public spaces where few people linger, he said: “I don’t think you’ve learned from history. Those spaces created outside those buildings aren’t good spaces so people don’t use them.’’

Cleveland Clinic needs to work harder to embrace the surrounding city, reverse the erasure of neighborhood connections

Scenes of the Cleveland Clinic’s campus viewed from sidewalks through the 165-acre facility.Steven Litt, cleveland.com

Fluker voted against approving the plans, but five other commission members gave the Clinic the majority it needed to seek a building permit.

Showing responsiveness

The Clinic’s plans for the new lab buildings along Cedar Avenue met with a warmer response. The Clinic’s designers, including the architecture firm of HOK and DERU, a Cleveland-based landscape architecture firm, earned warm words for changes in the design made following a review session in March.

The biggest modification is that the Clinic and the designers chopped the height of the CBB Building, to be located east of East 100th Street, by a full story, from nearly 114 feet to 88 feet in height.

Cleveland Planning Commission offers praise, criticism for three new Cleveland Clinic buildings

Renderings of two new laboratory buildings destined for the Cleveland Clinic. Cleveland’s City Planning Commission approved the plans Friday,June 2, 2023.HOK, DERU, Cleveland Clinic

Responding to a query from cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer, the Clinic said after Friday’s meeting that the change in the design reduced the CBB Building’s size from 376,000 to 299,400 square feet.

“We adjusted our overall plan to condense lab spaces and designed more efficient floor layouts throughout the buildings to reduce the amount of mechanical space needed,’’ the Clinic said in an email. “This was in alignment with the feedback we received from the community, Euclid Corridor Design Review Committee, and City of Cleveland Planning Commission.”

Members of the planning commission praised the reduction. They also liked the way HOK emphasized transparency on the main facades of the two buildings to enable passersby to see activity inside.

Plus, they appreciated the Clinic’s decision to locate a café with access from Cedar Avenue in the CBB building, and the effort to use a richer palette of trees and shrubs around the two buildings than has been the rule at the Clinic.

Cleveland Planning Commission offers praise, criticism for three new Cleveland Clinic buildings

Renderings of two new laboratory buildings destined for the Cleveland Clinic. Cleveland’s City Planning Commission approved the plans Friday,June 2, 2023.HOK, DERU, Cleveland Clinic

The designers said they made some of the modifications, and increased opportunities to install public art in and around the building, in response to special meetings held with neighbors of the new building in the adjacent, majority-Black Fairfax neighborhood.

Commission member Erika Anthony liked the sound of the meeting but said such gatherings should be routine and regular, not scheduled late in a design process when the Clinic was seeking approval under a deadline.

Issuing a challenge

Before the commission voted unanimously to approve the plans, Lillian Kuri, who chairs the body, issued a challenge to the Clinic.

She said the institution needs to include active, outward-facing uses on the ground floors of its building to bring the life of the city into its campus.

“The Clinic raises the bar for the city in terms of job creation and international growth, all those things,’’ she said, “but if there was ever an institution that could tackle this big question of is it possible to create a world-class place for people outside of just coming to the hospital…I think it is possible.”

Travis Tyson, a healthcare facility planner at the Clinic said the institution is listening to such critiques and will consider them as it embarks on updating its 2012 master plan.

“We would be excited to partner with you and help because we know you can’t do it alone,’’ Kuri said.



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