ErieView Development today announced the closing of financing for the $218 million conversion of Erieview Tower — turning the 40-story 1964 landmark at East Ninth Street and St. Clair Avenue into the 210-key W Cleveland hotel, expected to be the first W Hotel in Ohio, and 215 W Apartments offered for rent rather than for sale, a first for the brand worldwide. The hotel and residences are scheduled to open around late 2027.
The amenity program is the most extensive assembled in a single Ohio building. A resident will be able to park in the heated enclosed garage on a February evening, and reach the 38th-floor restaurant, without ever stepping outside. Residents, office tenants and hotel guests will draw on the same food and beverage program throughout the property, including dining delivered to residences and to office floors. The spa, fitness center, 15,000-square-foot ballroom and lobby lounge are planned to be reachable within the Tower.
W Cleveland is anticipated to be the first W Apartments developed exclusively as rental apartments rather than for-sale residences.
ErieView Development wishes to recognize the institutions and firms whose commitment made the project possible: Marriott International; Nuveen Green Capital; ERIEBANK, a division of CNB Bank; the Ohio Department of Development; the City of Cleveland and Cleveland City Council; Cuyahoga County; the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority; and the Cuyahoga County Land Bank. Each conducted its own review and reached the same conclusion about this building and this corridor.
A Landmark Redevelopment
Erieview Tower was completed in 1964 to a design by Harrison & Abramovitz and rises 529 feet across 40 stories and approximately 700,000 square feet. It remains Cleveland’s fifth-tallest building and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The redevelopment is planned to comprise:
- 215 W Apartments on floors 17 through 28, offered for lease — approximately 179,565 square feet
- A 210-key hotel— set to be the first W Hotel in Ohio
- Class A office, including the upper block on floors 29 through 38
- A signature restaurant and bar on the 38th floor
- A 15,000-square-foot ballroom, spa, fitness center and lobby lounge
- A 450+ space single deck subterranean parking garage
- The Galleria at Erieview
At $218 million, W Cleveland is among the largest single-building redevelopments underway in Ohio.
W Hotels is a brand within Marriott International’s luxury portfolio. W Cleveland will be the first hotel under a Marriott luxury brand to open in Cleveland since The Ritz-Carlton, Cleveland in 1990.
“Erieview has always been part of a bigger vision for downtown, and this project brings that vision to life. We are delivering a destination unlike anything Cleveland has seen, with an unprecedented level of amenities, a new standard of hospitality and a 38th-floor restaurant led by a celebrity chef whose name will speak for itself. This is a transformational investment in the heart of the city, and we believe its impact will extend well beyond Erieview, bringing new energy, activity and momentum to the entire district. Cleveland is ready for a project at this level, and we’re proud to be the ones delivering it..”
— Elias Kassouf, ErieView Development
The W Apartments
The 215 apartments are set to occupy 12 floors, starting at floor 17 through 28, and range from studios to two-bedroom units across approximately 179,565 square feet. Every unit is planned to offer open views of Lake Erie or the downtown skyline, at an elevation most residential towers reserve for their premium inventory.
Renters will have access to the hotel’s services — 24-hour concierge, door and porter service, in-residence dining, spa, fitness center and event space — together with dedicated residential amenities and access to elevated Marriott Bonvoy status through Marriott’s owner recognition platform, Onvia.
Class A Office
The upper office block runs from the 29th floor to the 38th. Views are unobstructed in all four directions: Lake Erie and North Coast Harbor to the north, the Cuyahoga Valley and the West Side to the west, Public Square and the central business district to the south, and the Shoreway to the east.
These floors sit above a luxury hotel. Office tenants will have access to the hotel’s fitness center and spa, in addition to amenities dedicated to the office floors. Dining is delivered to the office floors from the hotel’s restaurants, and a concierge desk receives visiting clients. Tenants can hold board meetings, recruiting dinners and investor days in the hotel’s event space, entertain clients at the 38th-floor restaurant and bar, and put visiting colleagues in guest rooms in the same building.
Space will be delivered turnkey, and can be built to each tenant’s specification at no capital cost to the tenant. With capital closed and construction priced, rents are set against today’s costs rather than tomorrow’s. A leasing team will be named in the fourth quarter.
The 38th Floor
A signature restaurant and bar will occupy the 38th floor, approximately 500 feet above East Ninth Street, making them the highest restaurant and bar in Ohio. Both will be open to the public. The floor previously housed Stouffer’s Top of the Town, which opened in the building’s first years and served Cleveland from the top of Erieview for three decades.
Financing
Nuveen Green Capital provided $93.4 million in C-PACE financing for the redevelopment, the largest C-PACE transactions closed in Ohio. The proceeds fund energy, water and building-envelope improvements, including VRF mechanical systems, curtain wall and elevator modernization. ERIEBANK, a division of CNB Bank, is providing senior financing of $20 million.
Foss & Company invested in the Ohio historic and Transformational Mixed-Use Development tax credits. Consortium Structured Investments invested in the federal historic tax credits, with Midland States Bank providing federal historic tax credit bridge financing. Cuyahoga County provided a loan supporting the hotel. The financings also include Ohio Brownfield Remediation Program funds, City of Cleveland tax abatements and tax increment financing, and Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority incentives.
BGL Real Estate Advisors served as exclusive financial adviser to the developer. KJK served as lead counsel, and TurnDev as project manager.
“It was a pleasure to partner with ErieView Development to capitalize this notable historic conversion project in downtown Cleveland with $93.4 million in C-PACE financing, which also marks the largest C-PACE-financed transaction in the state of Ohio. By maximizing C-PACE’s accretive, long-term, non-recourse financing at the highest allowable amount within the inventive capital structure, which also included historic tax credits as well as senior debt from ERIEBANK, the sponsor will be positioned to avoid a future refinancing event while ensuring the asset’s long-term success. This project underscores how C-PACE is increasingly being used by forward-thinking sponsors, like ErieView Development, to finance large-scale developments in Ohio and across the U.S.”
— Chris Ellis, Senior Director of Originations, Nuveen Green Capital
“This was a highly meaningful financing for BGL, not only because of the scale and complexity of the transaction, but because of what it represents for Cleveland,” said Anthony Delfre, BGL Managing Director, who advised ErieView Development on the financing. “BGL’s founder, the late Mike Gibbons, was a strong advocate for high-quality multifamily housing across the Midwest, and Northeast Ohio is exactly the kind of market where that vision continues to resonate. Cleveland’s momentum, combined with the strength of the Erieview redevelopment, helped make it an ideal setting for Marriott to introduce Ohio’s first W hotel and the first W Residences offered for rent anywhere in the world.”
— Anthony Delfre, BGL Managing Director
A Catalytic Project for East Ninth Street
East Ninth Street is downtown’s principal north-south corridor, connecting the lakefront to the core. Erieview Tower stands within walking distance of the Huntington Convention Center, Playhouse Square, Public Square, Progressive Field, Huntington Bank Field, Rocket Arena and North Coast Harbor. Next door, the former Ohio Bell Building reopened in 2025 as 367 apartments following a historic conversion.
A single-use office building empties in the evening and sits empty on weekends. W Cleveland will combine 215 households, 210 hotel keys, Class A office, a ballroom, a spa and a public restaurant and bar — uses whose peak hours do not overlap, producing activity on the street through the day and into the evening. Across all phases, the redevelopment is expected to support more than 600 jobs and generate more than $125 million in projected revenue to the City of Cleveland over 30 years, including property, income and parking taxes, with additional employment on the office floors as they lease.
Visitors to Cuyahoga County spent a record $6.9 billion in 2024, an increase of 4%, according to Destination Cleveland. Cleveland has had one luxury hotel flag since 1990. A luxury flag at the midpoint of East Ninth Street has the potential to change what a ground-floor operator can charge, what a neighboring owner can project and what a lender will advance. That is the standard by which the State of Ohio judged the project catalytic.
Project Team
The design is being led by Rockwell Group, the globally renowned architecture and design firm that designed the original W Hotel in New York in 1998 and the brand’s latest flagships at W New York – Union Square and W Hollywood, and by Beyer Blinder Belle, among the country’s foremost preservation architects, whose restorations include Grand Central Terminal and the Empire State Building lobby. Berardi + Partners serves as architect of record, with Turner & Townsend and Novogradac & Company completing the project team.
“A redevelopment of this scale requires extraordinary coordination across financing, public and private partners, development, design and construction. Reaching this closing is the culmination of years of work by an exceptional team and an important milestone in bringing the next chapter of Erieview Tower to life. KJK is proud to have served as lead counsel to ErieView Development and to stand alongside the Kassouf family, TurnDev and the entire project team as this transformative investment in downtown Cleveland moves forward.”
— Jon Pinney, Managing Partner, KJK
The W Cleveland Apartments and W Cleveland hotel guest rooms, together with the 38th-floor restaurant and bar, are scheduled to open around late 2027. Class A office floors will be delivered turnkey on tenant schedules through 2028.
Project renderings are available upon request.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260904013904/en/
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