CRAINSCLEVELAND.COM I JUNE 26, 2023
PHOENIX INVESTORS
Phoenix Investors see historic industrial park as a redevelopment opportunity
Mixed-use future eyed for Nela Park BY MICHELLE JARBOE
One year after buying Nela Park, the East Cleveland campus often billed as the world’s first industrial park, Phoenix Investors is still getting its arms around the unusual property. But Luke Herder, an assistant vice president of acquisition and leasing at the Milwaukee-based real estate company, is clear about one thing.
“We have no plans, at this point, to bring any of the buildings down,” he said. Phoenix purchased the 90-plusacre campus, the longtime headquarters of GE Lighting, for $5 million in the spring of 2022. But the company did not take full control of the buildings — more than two dozen of them — until early May of this year. And Phoenix has maintained a
low public profile, saying little about its intentions for a Northeast Ohio landmark. During a recent interview, though, Herder said the company is approaching Nela Park as a mixed-use redevelopment opportunity. There’s ample space for offices, labs and industrial tenants. Other buildings might be better candidates for housing or institutions, like a school.
The park, spanning more than 1 million square feet, is about 20% occupied, he said. GE Lighting, part of Savant Systems Inc., is the only tenant. Savant bought GE Lighting in 2020 from General Electric and subsequently sold off Nela Park, after a confidential marketing effort. Some prospective buyers wanted to level the Georgian Revival build-
ings, many of them constructed between 1911 and 1921. Others pursued the property for its electrical capacity, not its architecture or pedigree. The campus is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, but that designation doesn’t protect the buildings from demolition or significant alterations. See NELA PARK on Page 20
“AT THE END OF THE DAY, OUR MODEL IS ULTIMATELY VALUE-CREATION AND WORKING WITH COMMUNITIES TO REVITALIZE BLIGHTED REAL ESTATE.“ — Luke Herder, an assistant vice president of acquisition and leasing at Phoenix Investors
Tough racket: Sporting goods stores survive on service, relationships BY JOE SCALZO
You don’t make it for 44 years in the sporting goods business — as Ken Adler has done — without a keen understanding of what customers want. But you also don’t make it that long without guessing wrong a few times, which is how Adler found himself standing at the front of Rube Adler Sports inside the Solon Village on a
recent Friday, pointing at the three pickleball paddles on sale next to some Cleveland Guardians T-shirts. “This is typical us,” he said, chuckling. “We get all these trade magazines with pickleball on the cover. ‘Fastest-growing sport in the U.S.!’ They give you all these demographics and this and that, and this is the first year we put out some balls and some rackets.” And?
“We barely sell anything,” he said. “As far as retail goes, we feel like we’re the 7-11 of sporting goods. If a kid is on his way to a flag football game and he lost his mouthpiece, he runs in here beforehand. Or maybe someone grabs a can of tennis balls. “That’s what the retail business has turned into.” So, how does Rube Adler Sports — a business Adler’s grandfather start-
ed as a menswear shop on Detroit Avenue in the 1940s before quickly pivoting to a full-line sporting goods store — survive in a world with Dick’s Sporting Goods and Fanatics, not to mention Target and Walmart and Kohl’s and Amazon and hundreds of screen printers just a Google search away? Simple. By designing, sizing and delivering
custom uniforms for a third grader’s football team or a middle schooler’s hockey team before the season, then selling engraved trophies afterward. By selling (and sewing on the patches) for a high schooler’s letterman jacket — still a big deal for Generation Z — and offering spirit wear for their athletes’ parents and grandparents. See STORES on Page 19
VOL. 44, NO. 24 l COPYRIGHT 2023 CRAIN COMMUNICATIONS INC. l ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
These attorneys run the gamut of firms and jobs. They are partners, founders and group leaders. They work for larger firms as well as smaller firms that bear their name. PAGE 8
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