Cleveland eyes $10M in grants for one of city’s largest swaths of vacant land

Sean McDonnell

Publication Date: April 28, 2026‍

Cleveland.com (link to original article)

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CLEVELAND, Ohio – Cleveland is making a push for up to $10 million in state grants to clean up one of the largest stretches of industrial land in the city.

The proposal would mark 89 acres along railroads tracks on Cleveland’s East Side as a special investment zone, which is needed to apply for brownfield grants from the Ohio Department of Development. The collection of industrial parcels stretches between Carnegie and Woodland Avenue, east of East 55th Street.

This zone would sit between the Central and Fairfax neighborhoods. Council approved the measure Monday night.

Assistant Development Director Trudy Andrzejewski said the area is “one of the city’s largest concentrations of vacant industrial land” during a Council development committee meeting last week. City officials

are working in tandem with the Site Readiness for Good Jobs Fund, a nonprofit Mayor Justin Bibb formed that could acquire and clean undesirable land so that developers could find places to build in Cleveland.

City Council approved $50 million as seed money for the nonprofit. Since then, Rick Barga, the nonprofit’s lead on site development, said the Site Readiness fund has won another $12 million of brownfield grants.

Ohio regularly doles out brownfield grants to help clean up contaminated land for redevelopment, but Barga said the rules often change, thus the need to designate this stretch of land as a zone for investment.

Barga said the city would still need to apply to the state. The earliest they’d be awarded new funds would be in early 2027.

Councilman Richard Starr welcomed the news, saying the cleanup of industrial land is needed to bring jobs back to what was once an industrial zone.

“You can’t just bring a developer to an area and say these parcels are available without being able to provide some assistance,” Starr said during last week’s committee hearing.

Barga said the Site Readiness Fund has been hard at work acquiring parcels to assemble into larger sites.

He told council they’re focused on attracting manufacturers with jobs, like food producers and modular housing construction. Barga said they won’t recruit data centers and logistics companies.

No city tax dollars have been set aside for the investment zone, with any tax incentives for developments having to come back through city council.

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