The Cuyahoga Land Bank has put the Mickey’s building — the centerpiece of the Circle East project in East Cleveland — on the market after a prior development plan fell through.
Back in 2024, the land bank rolled out plans to turn the building into a laboratory developed by a company called Verdynt Bio. As Signal Cleveland reported last year, Verdynt and its leader have faced lawsuits tied to past work.
Land bank CEO Ricardo León said his organization parted ways with Verdynt at the end of 2025 after project financing didn’t come together. Now it’s back to the drawing board.
“Our hope is that we can find an end user who, again, aligns with the city’s vision and can become a job anchor,” León told Weekly Chatter. “The goal is to bring jobs back to East Cleveland.”
Mickey’s isn’t the only big land bank property for sale in East Cleveland. So is the site of the former Arco Recycling, a massive construction debris dump that caught fire and cost the State of Ohio $9.1 million to clean up nearly a decade ago.
As detailed by Ideastream Public Media, the man at the center of the dump, George Michael Riley, had been a land bank demolition contractor.
East Cleveland is selling a large patch of grassland that was once Huron Hospital. The Cleveland Clinic’s closure of Huron back in 2011 dealt a blow to the struggling city.
Another major East Cleveland albatross isn’t ready for the market yet: a 13-story apartment building on Terrace Road that has been vacant for more than a decade. It has long since been picked over by scrappers.
It will cost $3.4 million to demolish the building, with 75% of the money coming from the state and East Cleveland covering the rest, León said. He said he hopes to bring the eyesore down by the end of the year.
Sizing up Cleveland Citywide Development Corp.’s impact
This week, we told the story of a low-profile nonprofit that plays a key role in Cleveland’s economic development apparatus.
The Cleveland Citywide Development Corp. channels city, federal and philanthropic dollars to businesses, home repairs and other projects around town. But it’s not easy to keep tabs on its work.
After the story ran, CCDC Chair J. Stefan Holmes shared some more details about the nonprofit’s accomplishments. Last year, CCDC approved $9.1 million in funding for 95 projects, including assistance to 52 small businesses.
One of those projects in 2025 was a $249,999 Urban Development Action Grant for Heinen’s downtown store, records show. The grocery store closed this summer after years of financial losses.
Founded in 1981, CCDC is what’s known as a “community improvement corporation.” Although these groups are structured as nonprofits, they’re not entirely private organizations. CCDC meets at City Hall, and city officials sit on its board.
This year, the Ohio Supreme Court held that the Avon Lake Community Improvement Corp. was a public body bound by public records law. The court ordered the release of minutes from a brownfield committee meeting.
Discovered by Documenters: Say goodbye to the old Browns stadium bridges
Cleveland has been trying for years and years to assemble money for a majestic land bridge linking downtown with the lakefront. But a pair of far humbler bridges has been standing there all along.
The footbridges lead from the Huntington parking garage to Browns stadium. They’ve been closed for years. At last check, the bridges were marked by a weatherbeaten Browns sign hanging between the uprights of a rusted goalpost.
Not forever. As Documenter Tucker Handley noted, Cleveland’s Board of Control voted Aug. 5 to modify a land bridge construction contract to demolish those two bridges.
At the meeting, there was no word on what happens to the uprights.
