On the fifth floor of Cleveland City Hall, a little-watched nonprofit meets to approve public money for local businesses.
Even though the Cleveland Citywide Development Corp. doesn’t receive much publicity, it’s a key piece of City Hall’s economic development machinery. When Heinen’s shrunk the footprint of its downtown store to cut costs last year, CCDC signed off on $250,000 in aid.
The nonprofit also doesn’t seek out much attention. Its online schedule is out of date. And state law allows it to discuss financial and confidential business information behind closed doors during what is known as executive session.
CCDC gives out loans and grants ranging from a few thousand dollars to a quarter million. Last week, the group signed off on $7,650 for a vintage video game store on Memphis Avenue and $250,000 to help a real estate company buy a building on West 25th Street.
Another $100,000, split into two grants, went to Downtown Cleveland Inc. to expand food options and analyze the grocery store market downtown following Heinen’s downtown closure.
Founded in 1981 under then-Mayor George Voinovich, the nonprofit was meant to be “an independent body…that could help not only streamline, but bring new ideas of how to help businesses, particularly small businesses in the city,” according to CCDC’s current chair, J. Stefan Holmes.
Development corporation conducts key part of its business behind closed doors
Ohio law requires the CCDC’s decision-making meetings to be open to the public. But the law also allows the board to hold private sessions to talk about “any financial and proprietary information, including trade secrets” connected to business expansions, relocations or improvements.
At CCDC’s meeting last Thursday, which Signal Cleveland attended, the board asked visitors to leave the room before it considered 27 agenda items totaling more than $600,000. Applicants on the agenda included the culinary retail store Larder Supply Company, bike shop Joy Machines, the Plum Cafe on Lorain Avenue and Flavor Bomb Restaurant in Slavic Village, to name a few.
According to Dale Lenzer, who chaired the meeting, the board votes in public to approve the agenda items after ending the private discussion. (By the time Signal Cleveland made it back into the room after the executive session, the meeting was over.)
An agenda and meeting minutes from 2021, which a former board member shared with Signal Cleveland, indicate that the board votes to approve the agenda of grants and loans in public after the executive session. The board also takes initial votes during executive session, the 2021 minutes show.
The board is “very active” and inquires about whether applicants are financially stable, Holmes told Signal Cleveland.
“They want to know, have there been projects that particular entities have tried and failed?” he said. “They also want to know if, have they applied to the city before for funds, are they current, etc. That’s kind of information that the public doesn’t need to know and shouldn’t know.”
The board reviews project summaries, breakdowns of projects’ financing sources and reports on delinquent loan recipients, the 2021 documents shared with Signal Cleveland show.
Typically, however, there aren’t many visitors to send out into the fifth floor hallway during executive sessions.
“It’s not often that we have folks outside of the actual business…that are there,” Lenzer said.
Other parts of the meeting were conducted in the open. The board publicly discussed giving Famicos Foundation more time to pay back a loan for a home rehabilitation in the Glenville neighborhood. The nonprofit Slavic Village Development presented its plans for art projects in the Broadway area.
Despite importance of its work, following the nonprofit is difficult
The average Clevelander would have a hard time keeping tabs on the CCDC. The nonprofit’s web page lists a 2025 schedule, but not one for this year. The page does not list meeting agendas, either. (A staffer shared last week’s meeting date and time after Signal Cleveland asked for it.)
Asked whether CCDC had sufficiently informed the public about its upcoming meetings, Mayor Justin Bibb’s administration punted. A city spokesperson told Signal Cleveland that, as a nonprofit, CCDC was a “separate entity from the City” and should field questions for itself. City Hall did not respond to follow-up questions.
Even City Council has more to learn about CCDC. During last Thursday’s executive session, new Council Member Tanmay Shah arrived on the fifth floor.
He said he had just heard about the nonprofit’s meeting 30 minutes prior. After Signal Cleveland told him businesses in his Ward 12 were on the agenda, he entered the executive session and stayed until the meeting ended.
Shah told Signal Cleveland afterward that he has been “trying to understand why we have so much private involvement in the decisionmaking process” of directing public money.
A conduit for city, federal and philanthropic dollars
Asked whether CCDC was a watchdog, a custodian of the city’s business or a project partner, Holmes said the nonprofit plays all those roles.
He credited CCDC with stepping in to help when a number of businesses were behind on their economic development loan payments. City Hall hadn’t communicated enough with them, Holmes said.
“They weren’t keeping an eye on people that were having trouble hitting the repayment schedule,” he said. “We’ve done a great job in cutting those down.”
The board is a mix of public officials, bankers and nonprofit executives. Mayoral appointees and elected officials make up 40% of the board. The rest join through a nomination process.
Economic Development Director Joevrose B. Small and City Council Member Jasmin Santana are among the members. Holmes, a banker, worked at FirstMerit Corp., which was bought by Huntington Bank. Lenzer is a vice president at First Commonwealth Bank.
It may be Bibb’s second term, but CCDC is still carrying out neighborhood development plans set in motion by his predecessor.
One source of the nonprofit’s funds are dollars that then-Mayor Frank Jackson set aside for his Neighborhood Transformation Initiative. That money was slated for the Glenville, Buckeye and Clark-Fulton neighborhoods.
In 2024, CCDC spent more than $387,000 on down payment assistance and home rehabilitation as part of the transformation initiative, according to the most recently available state audit. The nonprofit also spent almost $92,000 for the GlenVillage retail incubator that year.
CCDC also uses federal money and proceeds from the tax-increment financing deal tied to the Steelyard Commons shopping center. Holmes said CCDC also draws on philanthropic dollars and revenues from businesses’ grant and loan fees.
Thanks to Cleveland City Council legislation passed in 2010, the nonprofit can authorize grants of up to $250,000 without needing council’s approval.
In February 2025, CCDC approved a $249,999 grant for Heinens’ downtown store. It was part of the $400,000 that the city and county put together to assist the grocery store and other downtown businesses. Because the grant didn’t exceed $250,000, it didn’t have to go through a more closely-watched City Council hearing, a city spokesperson told Signal Cleveland in July.
Cleveland’s community benefits law also gives the CCDC a role in overseeing such agreements, which are meant to ensure that development projects are fruitful for residents.
The CCDC is just one body in a constellation of nonprofits that do the public’s business.
Others include Gateway Economic Development Corp., which owns and repairs Progressive Field and Rocket Arena using public money; the Cuyahoga Land Bank, which demolishes vacant homes, develops housing and assembles land for projects; and the North Coast Waterfront Development Corp., which advocates for Cleveland’s lakefront vision.
