Sherwin-Williams Reveals More About Plans to Build Fourth Tallest Building in Cleveland
Sherwin-Williams’ new downtown Cleveland headquarters will include a 36-story office tower, a parking garage, a pavilion and elevated walkways that connect all three buildings.
But besides those and a few other key details, officials with the Fortune 500 company said plans for their new campus west of Public Square are still being ironed out. That includes the tower design and, fitting for the company building its new home, the colors of the paint it will use.
In other words, residents and workers will have to wait a little longer to find out how the next addition to Cleveland’s skyline will fit in with its surroundings. Architect Bill Chilton said work on how the buildings will look and what materials it will be made of just started last month.
Yet, the paint giant took a concrete step Thursday in the process, making public concept plans and starting the process to seek approvals from the city.
The project would fill a gaping hole in the heart of downtown Cleveland between the Warehouse District and Public Square, replacing flat parking lots with the new corporate headquarters of one of the region’s biggest companies. Construction is slated to start later this year.
Officials working on the project expressed optimism during a meeting Wednesday, ahead of the public release, about the work that’s to come on the $300 million, 1 million square-foot headquarters. They put forth a vision for it to occupy the land the Ameritrust bank once planned to build its new headquarters.
“Our idea is to create a site where we can stay for the next 155 years,” Sherwin-Williams Corporate Real Estate Director Tim Muckley said, referencing the fact that the company has been in business since 1866.
The company on Wednesday invited cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer to their current home at Landmark Office Towers on West Prospect Avenue for a look at what it settled on so far for its headquarters. Also on hand were principals of architecture firms Pickard Chilton and Vocon.
The company in February 2020 announced that it planned to stay in Cleveland and move its workforce to a new downtown tower, as well as build a new research and development facility in suburban Brecksville. But it had publicly released few details, preferring to drip them out even as local and state governmental agencies have approved more than $100 million in public incentives for what is estimated to be a $600 million investment in Cuyahoga County.
The announcement was welcomed by the business community and downtown developers, many of whom have touted their project’s proximity to the headquarters site as a selling point. In the past 16 months, as many white-collar employees worked from home and the coronavirus pandemic threw into question the future of office space, the paint company maintained its original course, one that would make space for more than 3,000 employees to be in one building.
Officials stressed that again on Wednesday, and Muckley gave reporters a brief tour of mockups the company has on what office space will look like. The mockups show that the company wants office life to continue in a similar fashion as before the pandemic.
The company plans to move into its new buildings by the end of 2024. The meeting with reporters was in advance of Sherwin-Williams submitting a packet to the city of Cleveland on Thursday for review and approval.
(You can view the packet here or at the bottom of this story.)
The submission was designed to kick off a flurry of activity for the city, and the company will no doubt press to have municipal officials sign off on the project in time for construction to begin in the fourth quarter of this year.
Company spokeswoman Julie Young said executives have been in touch with city Regional Development Director Ed Rybka and Planning Director Freddy Collier. A joint meeting of the Cleveland Landmarks Commission, City Planning Commission, Downtown Flats Design Review Committee and Historic Downtown Cleveland Design Review Committee is set for July 20. That body is tasked with providing approvals for the project and that day will go over the concept plans.
The city said Thursday that the joint committee will review the schematic design on Sept. 14 and has set the final presentation for Nov. 30.
On display in a conference room Wednesday was a model of downtown west of East Ninth Street. The company did not permit reporters to photograph any of the meeting, but the model showed that the new headquarters would tower over the rest of the Warehouse District.
It showed in detail, through a series of white pieces standing in for buildings, how the Sherwin-Williams will control three blocks of downtown, save for one small building owned by a real estate firm on the southwest corner of St. Clair Avenue and West Third Street.
The tower, slated for West Third Street and Superior Avenue to the west of Public Square, is estimated to top out at 600 feet, which would make it the fourth tallest building in Cleveland and sixth in Ohio. Chilton stressed that the height could change as more design work is completed.
Also shown was a marker for a two-story, 50,000 square-foot “learning and development center” pavilion that will go directly east of the tower on the west side of Public Square. The pavilion would include a “center of excellence” to highlight the history of the company and space for conferences and training.
Directly north would be a 920-space parking garage that will stand four stories high and have an additional level underground. Both the conference center and the garage would have walkways, with one going over West Third Street and the over what is now Frankfort Avenue.
Storefronts would line the parking structure on West Third Street, though Vocon Principal Matt Heisey said he did not have a firm number for how much retail space would be built.
Finally, the company is proposing that the city vacate the stretch of Frankfort Avenue between the future tower and garage into a private street, one that workers could drive on to enter the parking lot. The street would only be accessible to cars from West Sixth Street.
Chilton, whose New Haven, Connecticut firm also designed Eaton’s offices in Beachwood, said the decision to build the tower between West Third and West Sixth Street was in part motivated by a desire to give “breathing room” between the Warehouse District and Public Square. Putting the tower on the land where the pavilion is slated to go was possible but it’s a smaller parcel and would come with more constraints, he said.
“It’s been very intentional to pull the tower back, that this, in effect, becomes the front door for Sherwin-Williams, Chilton said, adding that having three large buildings on seven acres as part of a campus in any central business district “is very unique.”
But like other developments with the project, the information Sherwin-Williams provided Wednesday raised more questions, many for which officials said they don’t have firm answers. Chief among them are what materials will make up the building and how it will look.
Such details are expected in the next few months, as the joint committee will have to sign off.
Chilton said schematic design started a month ago and “will develop quickly.” However, the architect said his team and the company are still considering how the top of the building will look, knowing it needs to differentiate itself from many decades-old buildings that have flat roofs. He noted that CEO John Morikis made clear that he wanted the top to be distinct.
“I think that it’s not lost on Sherwin-Williams that the tower top, its presence on the skyline, is certainly an opportunity for the city of Cleveland,” Chilton said. “It’s also an opportunity for Sherwin-Williams from a branding standpoint.
“And so are you going to see a flat top?” the architect continued. “I don’t think so.”
The model also included markers for buildings that could go up in the coming years. One directly west of the tower is earmarked for another office building and Chilton said it would not be nearly as tall as the tower and likely more in line with the neighboring 17-story Rockefeller Building.
Other land that goes along West Sixth Street and St. Clair Avenue could be apartments, retail or offices. All the space will continue to operate as surface lots for 280 cars.
The officials also did not discuss what the company has in the works for the Brecksville R&D facility on a site that was once a Department of Veterans Affairs hospital off Interstate 77. Young said those plans are in the works and are on a different timeline than those for Cleveland, though the company also wants to have them approved by the end of this year so construction can begin.
Finally, Muckley said the company has not finished a plan to sell its current headquarters, which has recently lost tenants such as Hyde Park Prime Steakhouse and soon will lose others like the McCarthy, Lebit, Crystal & Liffman law firm. He said he has moved other Sherwin-Williams employees into those vacated spaces and that the company will form a plan to sell the building once they have a firm timeline to move into the new headquarters.
During the meeting, Young stressed that the company felt the public would have ample opportunity to weigh in on the building’s development. She said there is also an advisory group made up of community members though cited a nondisclosure agreement in declining to name them.
Young also said the Downtown Cleveland Alliance will host small input sessions and that Sherwin-Williams will have “one on one” meetings with organizations. The public will be able to comment and ask questions for the joint committee meetings through the Planning Commission website, the city said Thursday.
The one point the officials made clear, though, is that Sherwin-Williams sees the building as its future, even as its views on office life remain relatively traditional.
The company plans to bring its full workforce back by the middle of this month, though Young said many employees have the option of working from home two days a week.
Muckley said the intention of the new tower is that “pretty much everybody’s one elevator ride away.” The new campus will serve as a “wow” factor to try to attract talent both from the region and across the country, he explained.
Their focus is on downtown Cleveland, both as its home for the long term and exactly where many of its employees should work.
“We don’t believe that you can develop culture with a remote workforce,” Muckley said. “Our CEO probably said it best, that you can survive but you cannot thrive in a remote work environment. So we’re still planning on having basically one seat for every person at our headquarters.”