CLEVELAND — The city of Cleveland plans to update the zoning around Shaker Square in the wake of a tussle over a car wash proposal right behind the historic shopping center.
A top city official says discussions with neighbors and businesses could start within a few weeks. Cleveland City Council might get its first look at zoning legislation in mid-July.
“We want to hear from stakeholders and make sure that we’re getting it right,” said Tom McNair, the city’s chief of integrated development. “But I don’t think any of us wants to have the types of conversations that we’ve had to have over the last few weeks … again.”
The move comes after plans surfaced — then got scrapped — for a Clean Express Auto Wash near the southeastern quadrant of the Square, on a large vacant lot at Van Aken Boulevard and Drexmore Road. The proposal, for a high-profile corner in a historic district, caught city officials off guard and prompted an outcry from neighbors.
“I was shocked — and I was ticked,” said Sue Prochaska Galicz, a neighbor who emailed the Cleveland Landmarks Commission and contacted News 5 about her concerns.
“Square Square needs love. It doesn’t need a ton of car traffic. It needs foot traffic. It needs people who are going to shop and dine,” said Galicz, who grew up in the neighborhood and lives just off nearby Larchmere Boulevard in Shaker Heights.
At nearly 100 years old, Shaker Square is in a fragile place after a foreclosure and a rescue effort led by local nonprofits and the city. A handful of new restaurants have moved in recently, but some large storefronts are still sitting vacant.
The property’s owners, nonprofits Cleveland Neighborhood Progress and Burten, Bell, Carr Development Inc., have spent millions of dollars over the last few years on basic repairs and cosmetic upgrades, including fresh awnings, paint and signs.
RELATED: Shaker Square wraps up $5 million in renovations
They’re preparing to launch a capital campaign next year, with the goal of realizing a bigger turnaround vision for the buildings and the expansive outdoor space that knits the district together.
That’s why the prospect of a car wash — in a pedestrian-centric neighborhood built around public transit — felt like an existential threat.
“I was trying not to be too dramatic about this, but it would be very hard to come back from that,” Tania Menesse, president and CEO of Cleveland Neighborhood Progress, said during a phone interview. “It would stop a lot of the work that we’re doing in its tracks. … And it would signal to the market, in a way that is hard to combat, that this was the only thing that could get done here.”
On Tuesday, Clean Express Car Wash presented its plans for the site at Drexmore and Van Aken to a committee tasked with evaluating projects in city landmark districts. The virtual meeting marked the start of the Landmarks Commission review process — a process that ended fast, once neighbors and city officials made their objections clear.
Before the meeting, the city received 150 opposition letters from nearby property owners, neighborhood groups and civic organizations, including the Cleveland Restoration Society. Many of those letters described the proposal as jarring, at odds with the Square’s architecture and ethos.
Mayor Justin Bibb and his top deputies agreed, vowing to fight. The current retail zoning at the site allows car washes, but the location in a historic district brings extra scrutiny to any project. And the project would have required a variance because of its layout, with a fully enclosed car wash set back from Van Aken and drive-up lanes next to the boulevard.
Late Wednesday night, Clean Express Auto Wash announced that it was scrapping the project. Parent company Express Wash Concepts said it heard neighbors’ objections — and respects that the community wants something different.
“Cleveland deserves the right project in the right place, and we’ll keep looking,” John Roush, the company’s CEO, said in a news release.
McNair said the pushback from City Hall had nothing to do with Clean Express Auto Wash, which has other facilities in the city. “I think that they are a very reputable operator of car washes,” he said. “This is just not an appropriate location for such a use.”
Neighbors were so vociferous because they expected to see a different kind of plan for that corner, where Paran Realty Group demolished a vacant retail strip last year. An affiliate of Cleveland-based Paran bought the property in 2018 with hopes of reviving some of the retail spaces on the block and building apartments in the middle.
In late 2024, the property won an $802,369 state grant for asbestos remediation and site clean-up. An announcement from the Ohio Department of Development described the potential vision for the property as retail and residential.
That’s why neighbors like Galicz saw the car wash proposal as a “bait and switch.”
In an emailed statement Friday, a Paran executive said the company never made any promises about the future of the site, “and no permits were expressly conditioned upon any particular future use.” The ownership group tore down the former retail strip under pressure from Cleveland Housing Court, with approval from the Landmarks Commission.
The property owner worked with potential development partners to consider an apartment project on the site. But Paran determined that apartments were “not economically viable,” Joe Del Balso, the company’s managing director, wrote in the emailed statement.
“So we pivoted to other options consistent with the zoning code,” he wrote, alluding to the scuttled sale of the property for a car wash.
He said Paran is aligned with neighbors and the city when it comes to improving the Square and the surrounding area — and respects everyone’s right to speak out.
Now, Del Balso added, “we need their positive participation and partnership to help make redevelopment of this site a reality. We are in this for the long term and will continue to do the hard work of attracting investment to return the property to productive use.”
McNair said the city stands ready to help.
“We are committed to working with this property owner on appropriate development here on Shaker Square,” he said, adding that updating the zoning in the district — by rolling out a form-based code Cleveland has road-tested in other neighborhoods — should reduce red tape while making it easier for developers to figure out where certain types of projects fit.
Menesse welcomed the rezoning news.
The Cleveland City Planning Commission is expected to review and adopt a recent vision plan for the Square this summer. And developers are looking at other properties on the edges of the district for residential projects.
“I appreciate the city’s willingness to look at this aggressively,” she said.
Galicz is relieved the car wash proposal is dead. But she still has lots of questions — and concerns — about what’s next for the Square, which will mark its centennial in 2029.
“Geez, when we were little, my sisters and I used to ride our bikes up there, go to the drugstore, go to the movies, Hough Bakery,” she said. “It was a great place. It still is a great place. But if we don’t give it the love it needs, it could be doomed.”
After the past week, watching community members and city leaders unite, she has no doubts about people’s passion for the place.
“I think it’s great that, you know, the people are being listened to. … The response to this car wash makes me feel good,” she said. “Feel hopeful.”
Michelle Jarboe is the business growth and development reporter at News 5 Cleveland. Follow her on X @MJarboe or email her at Michelle.Jarboe@wews.com.
