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NEON Collaboration Provides Housing for Veterans and their Families
A crowd of residents, local elected officials and community partners were welcomed last month to the launch of the Northeast Ohio Neighborhood Health Services (NEON) Veterans Housing Project by brightly colored green and blue balloons, garnishing project boards and a waving American flag.
NEON and the Cuyahoga Land Bank collaborated to launch the initiative to renovate ten residential units to provide permanent affordable housing for veterans.
The units are part of a row house and a four unit apartment building across the street from NEON’s Collinwood Health Center, off St. Clair Avenue and East 152nd Street. This location allows for easy access to the health services that NEON will provide to future residents of the housing complex.
“Our veterans and their families deserve to live in a safe, supportive and healthy environment,†said Willie F. Austin, NEON’s President and CEO. “This project provides a holistic approach to housing. More than just a place to live, we will provide our residents with easy access to support and health services to improve their lives.â€
The Cuyahoga Land Bank helped NEON acquire the properties that were vacant and abandoned for their development entity, Community Integrated Services which will renovate and manage the properties at a cost of more than five hundred thousand dollars. The Cuyahoga Land Bank also invested fifty thousand dollars and is an equity partner in the project. All of the homes will include green amenities, such as energy efficient furnaces, energy-saving double-pane windows and insulated doors.
“The men and women who serve our Country have made many sacrifices,†said Cuyahoga Land Bank President and General Counsel, Gus Frangos. “Providing veterans with affordable housing and support through programs like this is just one way of saying thank you.â€
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Vacant Homes in Slavic Village Transform into Works of Art
With cleaned out vacant properties as their canvas, local artists transformed four homes in Slavic Village into spectacular temporary art exhibits. The art exhibition was part of the second Rooms to Let: Cleveland held on May 16th and 17th.
Hundreds of people from the community and Greater Cleveland gathered to enjoy the free event. Members of The Cleveland Orchestra performed as Factory Seconds kicked off the live entertainment that included music, art activities and local food.
Slavic Village Development brought the event to Cleveland as a way to further the conversation about the foreclosure crisis and its effects on Cleveland’s neighborhoods. Participating artists were invited to visually interpret their views on the impact of the foreclosure crisis and the community’s path to recovery by using four Cuyahoga Land Bank owned homes to host their work.
“Seeing the transformation of these vacant properties, while temporary, is amazing,†said Cuyahoga Land Bank President and General Counsel, Gus Frangos. “The Cuyahoga Land Bank is proud to participate in such an innovative event impacting our community.â€
The vacant homes were a unique medium for the artists. “Each house and space within is original. There were almost no limits to what could be created,†said Dana Depew, an artist and one of the event curators.
The Cuyahoga Land Bank provided assistance to Slavic Village Development along with support from Cuyahoga Arts and Culture for the exhibition.
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From Foundry to Fish Farm
Everyone cheers when an abandoned industrial property can find new life – but it takes money, savvy and, most importantly, a vision.
Those qualities came together for the Central and Fairfax neighborhoods with the launching of The Foundry Project, an innovative project in its infancy slated for a mixed-use re-birth on East 71st Street and Platt Avenue. Thanks to assistance from the Cuyahoga Land Bank, the former T&B Foundry, a former metal casting plant, will hopefully transform from a boarded-up factory to a sustainable fish farm and a groundbreaking data center. It's owner, J. Duncan Shorey envisions all sorts of possibilities: an orchard, a fine arts incubator and an educational center for fish farming.
The unusual brownfield redevelopment is the brainchild of  Shorey, an environmental attorney, consultant and geothermal expert. He sees a synergy between the proposed functions of the eight acre property. “We are looking to accomplish a lot,†he says. The property had been vacant since T&B closed in 2012 and was starting to deteriorate. There were legal hurdles to overcome and the property was weighed down with almost two million dollars in liens. Shorey credits the Cuyahoga Land Bank for clearing away those enormous obstacles and acquiring the property with a clean title. This allowed Shorey to purchase the property in March to begin his plans.
Initial focus is on the fish farm and data center. The fish of choice is Branzino, also known as Mediterranean sea bass, a mild-tasting, quality fish that is high in healthy Omega-3 fats and currently farmed in Europe. Growing them in Cleveland will mean fresher, healthier fish for restaurants and markets across the Great Lakes Region region and Ontario. The farm will use a Recirculating Aquaculture System (RAS), a process in which water is cleaned, filtered and recycled to the fish tanks without hormones or antibiotics, creating a low-stress environment. According to Shorey, he has collected letters of intent from several seafood distributors, as well as endorsements from Cleveland chefs Karen Small of Flying Fig restaurant in Ohio City, and Doug Katz, owner of Fire Food and Drink in Shaker Square.
“We did a lot of market research,†Shorey says, “and asked what restaurants would buy. We had to ask, is this fish agreeable to being managed? Across all types of farming, that is a consideration.â€
Another important factor was the cost of generating energy to run an aquaculture site that proposes to produce ten thousand pounds of fish per week. According to Shorey, the solution is an underground, bunkered data center that will use three 100-gigabit per second fiber networks located next to the adjacent rail lines to provide customers with one of the world’s fastest internet connections. The data center will generate “waste heat†that will power and heat the fish farm which in turn will produce fish waste to feed the planned orchard and other crops. “We will use geothermal technology – it is not new,†Shorey says, “but it is off-the-shelf technology used in an innovative way.â€
“We will have twenty thousand square feet of computer space,†Sho rey adds, “a massive array that will be an economical data center for some of Cleveland’s biggest companies.â€
In total, The Foundry Project will cost between fifteen million and twenty million dollars, including about six million dollars for asbestos removal in the old foundry building. Shorey says he plans to develop the property in stages; over time it will generate jobs as well as education.
"We hope to grow sustainable fish, create good jobs for both inner city and other residents and bring good food choices to the neighborhood,†states Shorey.
His timeline is ambitious: Shorey says, the data center will happen pretty quickly and "we will be growing fish in the next year."
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