CLEVELAND — Love Funding has closed on a $15.3 million loan to renovate a large, historic city block in downtown Cleveland into a loft apartment community. West 25th Street Lofts will offer 83 market-rate loft apartments in four adjacent buildings in Cleveland’s Ohio City neighborhood, including one that was originally constructed in 1866 to house the Jacob Beahr Brewery.
In short, the apartments will replace a vacant group of buildings on West 25th Street. The developers of the $27.4 million project are Rick Foran of Foran Group Development LLC and Chris Smythe of Smythe Property Advisors LLC.
Love Funding Midwest Regional Director Bruce Gerhart secured the financing through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s 221(d)(4) loan insurance program. The HUD program provided the development team with low-rate, non-recourse financing for the duration of construction and for a subsequent 40-year term.
The loan was originally slated to be finalized in 2014, but the closing of a charter school in one of the newer buildings enabled the development team to add another 22 units to the project, according to Love Funding.
Since then, the immediate area has benefited from further development, leadingUSA Today to name the area one of the 10 “up and coming” neighborhoods in the United States.
In addition to the HUD loan and historic tax credit equity provided by other sources, the project has tapped two City of Cleveland funding programs.
Over the past several decades, the property has been home to a local Odd Fellows chapter, a metal shop operated by The Riester and Thesimacher Company, The Phoenix Machine Company, Lester Engineering Co. and the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority.
According to the Plain Dealer, the Cleveland newspaper, apartments at the West 25th Street Lofts will range from studios to three-bedroom units at rents starting near $1,100 a month and topping out at $1,840. The apartments could open in September 2016.