LAKEWOOD, Ohio -- Roughly four years after Scalish Construction purchased the former Trinity Church property, construction started late last year on the $3.75 million Detroit Avenue adaptive-reuse project.
“The Trinity Church property was acquired by the city to save it from demolition in 2018,” Lakewood Director of Planning Shawn Leininger said.
“We put it out for RFP, selected Scalish Construction to acquire the property, preserve it and adaptively repurpose the historic church. They’re in the process of moving forward with our plans to complete that rehabilitation renovation and the commercial storefronts.”
Currently, there’s work being done on commercial storefronts as well as the church.
Leininger said confirmed tenants for the former include The Cleveland Bagel Company and Jersey Mike’s.
Scalish Construction is planning to move its offices into a portion of the church space.
cleveland.com, which reached out numerous times to Scalish Construction without response, previously reported that the project is expected to include more than 30 jobs and generate estimated new real estate taxes of more than $100,000 annually.
“The renovation you see in the front of the church now is the steps are removed,” Leininger said. “Those were in terrible condition.
“So they’re completing all the renovation so they can get tenants moved in there, hopefully later this year.”
The adaptive-reuse concept calls for the transformation of the former church and two vacant commercial storefronts, as well as the construction of up to 10 new residential units, the addition of several public areas and the repurposing of existing retail buildings for small businesses.
The new development will be built with green technology and currently includes the possibility of adding sustainable features -- a small solar array, educational community garden with rainwater recycling, bicycle parking, electric car charging stations and a green roof.
The adaptive reuse project is important for the City of Lakewood, Leininger said.
“We’re fortunate we have a great stock of historic buildings in our community,” he said. “Some of those buildings we have to think about uses -- especially in this case with a church.
“So we’re always looking to be creative and think outside the box about how we not only preserve these buildings, but how do we purpose them with new uses so they can they can live on for future generations.”
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