CLEVELAND — After starts and stops — and some financial gymnastics — the developers behind the long-awaited makeover of Erieview Tower are finally moving forward.
The project team recently closed on financing for the $218 million overhaul, which will include Ohio’s first W hotel and 215 luxury apartments. The tricky redevelopment has been on the drawing board for years. Now the hotel and housing, along with a restaurant and bar on the tower’s 38th floor, are set to open in late 2027 or early 2028.
“It was a big undertaking. But there was never a time in my mind that I didn’t think we could get it done,” Elias Kassouf, a principal with ErieView Development, said during an interview this week. “It was just hurdle after hurdle. We just kept at it, made it work.”
The developers originally aimed to start renovations last year. News 5 last toured the building in early 2025, when interior demolition was happening, and initial financing for the apartments was in place.
WATCH: See the building during demolition in early 2025
But the project ran into delays as the team worked to wrap up the hotel side of the deal. Public records show all the funding finally coalesced in August.
“When it became apparent we needed to get one lender across the entire campus, we just restructured,” said Anthony Delfre, a managing director at investment banking firm Brown Gibbons Lang & Company, which put together the financing.
“As is the case with everything in the capital markets environment today,” he added, “with interest rates that have risen and some of the uncertainties with costs associated with labor and materials, it just took a little longer … But we are really pleased that everything is full steam ahead.”
The 210-room W hotel, part of the Marriott International family of brands, will fill the 40-story tower’s lower floors. The apartments upstairs will also carry the W brand, marking Marriott’s expansion into branded rentals.
W hotel properties in other cities include for-sale condominiums.
The project in Cleveland is the first of its kind for the hospitality giant. The apartments will include studios, one-bedroom and two-bedroom units, ranging from 500 to 1,200 square feet.
Kassouf and Delfre said it’s too early to discuss rents. But they expect pricing to be similar to what landlords are seeking at other high-profile properties, like the Artisan apartments in University Circle and the Intro complex in Ohio City, across from the West Side Market.
Tenants at Erieview will have access to hotel services and amenities, including a spa and fitness center.
“We’re going to have in-room dining from the restaurants that are going to be in the project. We’re going to have turndown service, if they want to have their room cleaned or their sheets changed or their linens changed,” Kassouf said.
The project will include a restaurant on the first floor and a restaurant on the 38th floor, with sweeping views of the city and Lake Erie. That lofty space was home to a popular restaurant called Top of the Town for decades.
Kassouf said the new dining perch will be led by “a celebrity chef.”
Plans call for preserving about 240,000 square feet of office space on the building’s upper floors. There's a parking garage, with room for about 450 cars, underneath the complex.
The hotel’s meeting spaces will spill over into the Galleria next door, a glassy former shopping mall that’s also earmarked for major renovations.
“I’m not really ready to announce what we’re doing with it yet,” said Kassouf, who mentioned the prospect of specialty retail, dining and other attractions. “But it’s gonna be equally as exciting as the W… I think the Galleria needs to be a centerpiece that becomes the living room of Downtown.”
The development team is working closely with Marriott on plans for the Galleria.
“What I love about this project is that it’s a temperature-controlled place that’s about a 5-acre site,” Kassouf said of the tower and the Galleria, which sit between East Ninth and East 12th streets, on the north side of St. Clair Avenue.
“Someone can come in here in the dead of winter and never leave the property,” he said. “And I think walking into here, experiencing what Marriott can do, what it has the right scale — it’s everything.”
An investor group led by the Kassouf family bought the ailing office tower, Galleria and garage in 2018. They signed a contract with Marriott in early 2020, roughly two weeks after the COVID-19 pandemic spurred business shutdowns and stay-at-home orders.
At the time, nobody expected the financing process to take six years.
The deal includes federal and state tax credits for preserving the skyscraper, which opened in 1964 as the centerpiece of a major urban renewal plan. The developers also won state tax credits from a program for “transformational,” mixed-use projects, along with a state grant for asbestos remediation and interior demolition.
Ultimately, a group called Nuveen Green Capital provided $93.4 million in financing for the project through a tool called C-PACE, which lets property owners borrow money for green-building upgrades and pay off the debt through special assessments that get tacked on to the property’s real estate tax bill.
The developers also secured a $20 million loan from ErieBank; a Cuyahoga County loan; city incentives, including property-tax abatement; and a sales-tax break on building materials through the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority.
Local development group TurnDev is managing the Erieview project. The design team for the hotel includes Rockwell Group, the firm behind the original W hotel in New York.
“The city of Cleveland stuck with us,” Kassouf said. “The county stuck with us. The state stuck with us. It made it a little bit easier than just trying to be on our own on it.”
Plus, Marriott’s commitment never wavered, he said.
“I think it’ll be catalytic,” Delfre said of bringing a W hotel and apartments to the center city. “And I think it’s going to be the first live-work-play space in this particular area of Downtown.”
From one of the future apartment floors, it’s easy to see the shifting landscape along East Ninth. On the same block, there’s the Bell, an office-to-apartment conversion that opened in 2024.
Across the street, there are winners and losers in the recent office-market shakeout. A handful of properties in the district are in foreclosure and receivership. The federal government wants to empty out and unload the Anthony J. Celebrezze Federal Building at East Ninth and Lakeside Avenue.
WATCH: The debate over the future of Cleveland's federal building
But developers are working to reimagine some of the vacancies. A few blocks to the south, for example, the historic Rose Building complex at East Ninth and Prospect Avenue is set to become a Marriott Tribute hotel — with its own Marriott-branded apartments.
WATCH: Cleveland is a national leader in remaking old office buildings.
Companies tied to the Kassoufs recently snapped up two troubled office properties on East Ninth. Real estate records show they paid $4 million for the 800 Superior tower and garage and $4.25 million for Ohio Savings Plaza and Park Plaza, two buildings that bookend a parking garage along Chester Avenue. A Kassouf affiliate company also owns that garage.
Elias Kassouf said his family aims to renovate and maintain those buildings as offices.
“People are already living down here. Now we have to convince them to come back to work,” he said, stressing that office tenants are essential to supporting retail investments and broader growth.
“There’s a lot of developers that are doing a lot of hard work in Downtown,” he added. “And we just want to be part of the team.”
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.
