Cleveland’s Warner & Swasey industrial plant is becoming much-needed multifamily housing and mixed-use commercial space.
Warner Swasey Building Exterior
© Moody Nolan

For decades, Clevelanders motoring downtown for a ballgame or out of town after a workday saw the huge Warner & Swasey Carnegie Avenue plant as a visual landmark. Some rolled down their windows to listen for the whine of machinery as they drove past. 

Forty years ago, when the throbbing industrial activity stilled within the factory, it morphed into an empty shell visited only by graffiti artists. Now, however, the 122-year-old, 194,000-square-foot building is being reborn as a mixed-use, mixed-income community offering 112 rental apartments with another 28 apartments and 22,000 square feet of commercial space to come in a future phase. The $66 million Warner & Swasey redevelopment is just one of many adaptive reuse projects helping put Cleveland on the map as a national leader in historic conversions.

Within the primary Warner & Swasey structure, known as the Carnegie Building, floors two and three will feature 56 units of senior housing, while floors four and five will deliver 56 affordable family housing units, says Geoff Milz, regional vice president for the developer, Pennrose. The first floor will provide amenities including a fitness center and a community room for building residents.  

Former Carnegie Building in Cleveland
The former Carnegie Building in Cleveland, circa early 1900s.

Also featured: A second-floor roof deck and a dog park located at the rear of the building. A connecting structure, the Wedge Building, will offer 28 housing units, as well as spaces that may serve as a school or daycare center and possibly a bank, given that many Midtown Cleveland residents are unbanked. “Cleveland is flush with nonprofits that do incredible work,” Milz says. “Clever nonprofits may find a future home in those spaces.”

Geoff Milz

So many Clevelanders have a connection to the building, the site and the neighborhood in a certain time in history, the narrative became very compelling.” – Geoff Milz 

Creative Stack

The redevelopment effort has already built a legend based on the more than two dozen financing sources assembled to enable its move forward. “The fact it is an adaptive reuse made the project eligible for historic tax credits,” Milz says. “But more importantly, so many Clevelanders have a connection to the building, the site and the neighborhood in a certain time in history; the narrative became very compelling. It would have been different had this been a greenfield or different brownfield site . . . [There] are evocative memories connecting people to this site and to positive feelings.” 

Milz says a “herculean job” was done by Pennrose Developer Will Basil and Associate Developer Michael Golden to close on financing. “It was pretty amazing, wrestling those 25 sources to the ground and negotiating all of the closing documents,” he recalls. 

The Warner & Swasey Company interior during WWII
The Warner & Swasey Company made precision machine tools, telescopes, and even parts for planes, ships and tanks during both World Wars.

Two factors explain why, despite iconic status, the Warner & Swasey factory went 40 years without being redeveloped, says Ashley Shaw, executive director of Midtown Cleveland, Inc., a partner of Pennrose in the project and one of 17 community development corporations working in the city. 

“It’s both because the building is so big and because there are few uses that could take up the whole building,” she says.  

“That made it difficult to pencil. The reason it’s working now is there’s a ton of subsidy. The units are over $500,000 apiece, with almost no income on it, meaning there was little debt we could take on. We had to get creative in assembling a capital stack.”  

The redevelopment project also involves construction hurdles. For instance, all floor plates have to be removed and rebuilt. “They have to demolish the five floors while retaining the roof,” Shaw says. “So, the concrete for the new floors will have to be poured through the top of the building. The roof has been removed and will be replaced after the floors have been poured.” 

The project is also prioritizing retention of some historic elements. Over 40 years, street artists worldwide have surfaced in Cleveland to paint within the building. “We’re archiving that and hope to retain some of it within the repurposed building,” Shaw says. 

Ashley Shaw

We have a lot of very beautiful older buildings and lots of historically significant buildings. There’s a lot of reasons to preserve them.” – Ashley Shaw

Long Overlooked

Terming Cleveland “one of our country’s best-kept secrets and one of our most beautiful, vibrant cities,” Shaw says Cleveland has long been a leader in adaptive reuse. “We have a lot of very beautiful older buildings and lots of historically significant buildings. There’s a lot of reasons to preserve them.” 

We Did It Together projection on Warner & Swasey factory
© Geoff Milz

About 3.2 million square feet of Cleveland office space has been converted into housing since 2020, among the nation’s highest conversion rates. Two department stores, The May Company and the Beaux-Arts design Halle Brothers, have been converted, the former into 245 housing units, and latter into a mixed-use building with 122 apartments.  

Shaw hopes redevelopment catalyzes efforts to revive the adjacent Carnegie and East 55th intersection, now a site of numerous empty buildings that could be redeveloped. It was once home to Penn Square, a transportation node buzzing with activity as the setting of both a commuter train station and a stop for interurban trains into Cleveland.  

“What I’m excited about is the next 40 years,” Milz says, “And all the life that will happen within those four walls during the next chapter of Warner & Swasey.”