Designing the New Economy will envision the future of work in Cleveland, focusing on the area between Downtown Cleveland and University Circle, including the Health-Tech Corridor, Opportunity Corridor, and surrounding neighborhoods. The project is a collaboration between Kent State’s Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative, the Ohio Employee Ownership Center, and LaunchNet, with the generous support of the Cleveland Foundation.
Major infrastructure investments in the Healthline/Euclid Corridor and Opportunity Corridor have made vacant sites and underutilized buildings on the city’s east side more commercially viable, with the potential to contribute to a revitalized manufacturing and employment district. Four of the city’s Opportunity Zone Districts (Downtown Cleveland, Health-Tech Corridor, Opportunity Corridor, and Glenville/Rockefeller Park) are concentrated in this area, offering financial incentives for reinvestment.
Cuyahoga County Opportunity Zones (Image: Greater Cleveland Partnership)
This project will create a vision of how buildings and sites can be reused for economic and community development and make visible the big opportunity of the Cleveland Innovation Project, an initiative of the Greater Cleveland Partnership to revitalize manufacturing in the region. The COVID-19 situation has exposed lack of local production and insufficient availability of local resources. We will identify opportunities and locations for more production and storage locally, along with infrastructure recommendations to support the re-shoring manufacturing and supply chains. For more information, contact the CUDC team at cudc@kent.edu.