Midtown’s Momentum Grows Collaboration Center connects community through health, arts & entrepreneurship resources By Doug Bardwell | Photos by Doug Bardwell & David Joseph
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“We didn’t move to Midtown just to build our building,” says Lilian Kuri, CEO of the Cleveland Foundation. “It was a much larger vision to move here and do two things. One was to connect downtown and University Circle. We’re a city with two downtowns. By leveraging the bus, rapid transit and the health tech corridor, we can eventually feel like one connected city. And secondly, was to really change the conversation about the east side neighborhoods, which haven’t received as much investment.”
It was all part of their vision
“Our board decided to move here from downtown when we were able to assemble enough land and show a bigger vision here,” explains Kuri. “Where we are
today, next to Dunham Tavern Museum and their park space – we believe this intersection in this district is the ‘therethere’ that’s been missing.” Before building the foundation’s headquarters here, it accumulated almost 11 acres, between Euclid and Chester, from the Dunham Tavern to Dave’s Supermarket. The current planning would allow as many as eight buildings, totaling potentially one million square feet. Kuri explains that they had also envisioned an Innovation District that would attract jobs and opportunities, noting that Cleveland Foundation’s Chief Growth Officer and CFO Rosanne Potter proposed a unique approach. “Rosanne Potter suggested that we build the building ourselves, partnering
with the right institutions, and to do it in a way that no one has done it in America, taking an innovation building that’s internal and turn it outward,” Kuri says. “Every tenant here serves the community in any number of unique ways,” explains Potter. “Some help entrepreneurs get jobs. Others provide capital for those wanting to start a business. One provides actual healthcare in this building. There’s education around community health. There also are a beautiful restaurant and brewery to serve the neighborhood with great food and drinks. There are arts for the community and education for students. Every tenant is not only making themselves available, but what they do is directly involved in www.propertiesmag.com 15
Photo by Doug Bardwell
ar from being just another office building along Euclid Avenue, the 98,000-square-foot MidTown Collaboration Center (6579 Euclid Ave., Cleveland) serves as a catalyst for community revitalization. The three-story building, featuring a red terra cotta façade, sits directly across East 66th from the Cleveland Foundation Headquarters, which opened in 2023.