Community Building
Cleveland Foundation enhances philanthropic mission with new headquarters in MidTown Story + photos by Doug Bardwell
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ne of the newest buildings in Cleveland’s MidTown neighborhood is the striking new headquarters for the Cleveland Foundation, the world’s first community foundation and one of the largest today with assets of $2.8 billion and annual grants of more than $138 million. Formerly located in the Hanna Building, hidden away on the 12th and 13th floors, the Foundation is making a bold statement with this new facility.
Located at 6601 Euclid Ave., this $28 million, LEED Gold project has three floors of community and office space with a garage below. The 80,600-square-foot building is a hybrid, blending steel frame construction with glulam columns and beams typically found in mass timber construction.
Time to reimagine the office
from a company named Dumont Jenks in Boston, who’ve had some very pronounced projects throughout the country,” recalls Potter, “and realized that we needed to have the density, which we do have here, of having at least more than one million square feet of office and building capacity. Also, we had to have two sides of the street to create a destination area where people feel like they’ve arrived and that they’re a part of something unique and special.” After looking at many sites Lilian Kuri and analyzing community needs, Cleveland Foundation it became clear that they needed to relocate to MidTown to help 40 locations. The more they looked, the catalyze that area. “We looked at buying more they became convinced that they property, and this is the heart of it,” needed somewhere with a streetfront explains Potter. “We have about 11 acres presence for their front door. between East 63rd and 66th.” “We did a lot of visioning. We got The Foundation found itself in the some expert master planning advice enviable position of being able to finance First came a site selection process. The Foundation searched a wide swath across the city for the perfect location. The search included slightly more than
“This is a manifestation of what the Foundation wanted to think about ourselves, being open and welcoming and accessible and transparent in a building that would represent the community foundation.”
“I joined the Foundation in 2016,” says Rosanne Potter, chief growth officer and CFO, “and the first week I was here, Ronn Richard [former CEO] said, ‘You’re going to be working on an office space project, and you’re going to be looking for a new headquarters.’” Having been located in the Hanna Building for decades, they realized the space neither met the needs of the community nor the Foundation’s staff. They also wanted a first-floor presence.
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