Issuu

BUSINESS OF THE ARTS Shows may be back, but music venues are still struggling.

CRAIN’S LIST: There’s a new second-largest law firm in Northeast Ohio. PAGE 18

PAGE 10 CRAINSCLEVELAND.COM I AUGUST 15, 2022

OPPORTUNITY IN NEW AREAS

Developers bet on city’s East Side

Lighthouse ArtSpace Cleveland, a creative repurposing of an industrial building on the city’s East Side, is an Opportunity Zone project. The Immersive Van Gogh exhibit opened there in 2021. | MICHELLE JARBOE/CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

BY MICHELLE JARBOE

Opportunity Zone investors are venturing further from downtown Cleveland and other bustling areas — and tiptoeing into long-overlooked stretches of the city’s East Side. That’s one takeaway from data ap-

pended to the Ohio Department of Development’s annual report, released earlier this month, and a Crain’s analysis of public records. The federal Opportunity Zone program, and Ohio’s companion tax credits, helped shape the conversion of an industrial building into a venue

in the St. Clair-Superior neighborhood. The warehouse, on East 72nd Street, hosts the traveling “Immersive Van Gogh” exhibit and now serves as a regional distribution and assembly hub for similar art experiences. In the Central neighborhood, investors are exploring plans for a busi-

ness park between Woodland Avenue and Kinsman Road, off East 61st Street. And in nearby Kinsman, workers are moving dirt for construction of a cold-storage facility along the Opportunity Corridor boulevard. Backers of those projects — and, yes, notable deals in the central busi-

ness district, Ohio City and University Circle — were among the 400-plus applicants who sought state Opportunity Zone tax credits this year. Development officials approved just over $26 million worth of credits, See OPPORTUNITY on Page 20

Quest to harness Lake Erie winds There’s still value to doing Icebreaker Windpower given go-ahead to begin construction following court ruling

business on the golf course

BY KIM PALMER

BY JOE SCALZO

For more than a decade, clean energy supporters have worked to make Cleveland the first city to harness the wind coming off Lake Erie. With one final hurdle cleared, that hope is on its way to becoming a reality. Icebreaker Windpower, North America’s first freshwater, offshore wind-powered electric-generation

project, was given the go-ahead to begin construction following an Ohio Supreme Court ruling Wednesday, Aug. 10. In a 6-1 decision, the court found state energy regulators appropriately granted a permit to LEEDCo, the company behind the Icebreaker project, despite an objection from residents living near the Lake Erie shore who claimed the company did not provide adequate evidence

NEWSPAPER

P001_CL_20220815.indd 1

regarding possible harm to migrating birds and bats in the area. The decision, which came more than eight months after state Supreme Court justices heard oral arguments in the case, was met with both a sense of relief and optimism — plus some resentment for the years of delay that objections to the project caused. See WINDS on Page 21

THE

Next month’s Transatlantic Business Conference is a three-day program that brings together all 22 chapters of the British-American Business Network in the United States and the U.K. It includes sessions on law, aerospace, health care and finance. It features a keynote speaker from a senior U.K. government official. It helps

LAND SCAPE

companies connect and build business on both sides of the Atlantic. And it all starts with a golf tournament. That’s not an accident. “In many ways, this is the most important day of the conference,” said Don Larson, the president of the British American Chamber of Commerce (BACC) and the managing partner of See GOLF on Page 22

A CRAIN’S CLEVELAND PODCAST

8/12/2022 2:30:26 PM