CLEVELAND — In a tightly packed pocket of Cleveland’s Tremont neighborhood, a pair of half-built townhomes has been sitting – untouched – for more than a year.
The project didn’t stall out because a developer ran out of money. It’s not a casualty of construction cost swings or material shortages. And there’s no lack of demand for new homes in this part of the city.
Progress stopped, instead, because of a conflict that’s 6,000 miles away. The Sixth City Townhomes show the ripple effects of far-flung wars and tragedies on communities – and the economy – here in Northeast Ohio.
“We’re standing in this 45% completed project because of what happened on Oct. 7 in Israel,” said Andrew Gotlieb, the builder.
He's talking about Oct. 7, 2023, when roughly 1,200 people died during Hamas-led attacks on Israel. Since then, Israel’s military offensive in Gaza has resulted in more than 50,000 deaths, according to Palestinian health authorities.
Gotlieb’s partner on the Sixth City Townhomes project is an Israeli investment group with money in real estate deals across the United States. On Oct. 7, his overseas partners’ lives were turned upside down.
One investor family – a father, mother, and two young children – died that day. They were on a camping trip near the site of the Nova music festival, a target of one of the attacks.
“Imagine you’re on Steels Corners (Road), leaving Blossom,” Gotlieb said, referring to the popular concert venue nestled in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. “And … imagine if somebody just blocked the road and started gunning people down in those cars. And that’s what happened.”
'Nobody knew how long it was gonna take'
Gotlieb remembers being glued to the TV news that day, and for several weeks after. He’s Jewish. His parents moved to the United States from Israel decades ago.
So in October 2023, real estate was the last thing on his mind.
The project in Tremont, with only the first two of six planned townhouses in the ground, slipped into limbo.
At first, it was difficult to reach people in Israel, where investors’ family members were getting pulled into mandatory military service and displaced from their homes and jobs.
The war also shocked Israel’s economy. The stock market initially took a hit. All the turmoil made some of Gotlieb’s investors feel uncertain and more cautious.
“We had people that we lost,” he said. “Because of the financial instability of it, we had partners who weren’t sure what was going to happen next. … Nobody knew how long it was gonna take.”
Gotlieb, the president of family-owned Keystate Homes in Bedford Heights, tried to keep his contractors busy. He quietly told some people in Tremont what was going on.
But until this month, he didn’t want to talk about the situation publicly.
“It took time to figure out where the dust was going to settle,” he said, referring to negotiations about replacing investors and navigating Israeli legal processes around who was going to inherit shares in the sidelined development.
“I wanted to tell a story that would allow for the happy ending that it deserved,” he added.
'We're never going to give up'
Gotlieb could have walked away from the project, cutting his losses.
If the circumstances were different, the property might have ended up going through a distress sale or foreclosure. But the investors are the ones bankrolling the project. There isn’t a lender waiting to be repaid.
And for the builder, this project has become personal.
Finding a way to finish it is a point of pride. It’s also a way to pay tribute to the family killed on Oct. 7, 2023 – identified in social media posts and news stories as Dina and Genia Kapishter and their children, Alin and Ethan.
Gotlieb recently stood inside the unfinished townhomes with a picture of the family pulled up on the screen of his phone.
During an interview, he paused and struggled to hold back tears, describing the reasons for the tall grass outside, the exposed wall sheathing and the sheeting flapping on the roof.
“We’re never going to give up,” he said, adding that his parents raised him to always complete a job. “But … there’s adversity in this world, and some adversity affects others in ways that you can’t imagine or relate to. This is a project that’s here in Cleveland. It’s local. But it relies so much on what’s happening a thousand miles away.”
This week, the project finally started to come back to life. On Wednesday, workers delivered loads of siding. On Thursday, a crew was out there climbing scaffolds, installing protective house wrapping and putting up trim.
Gotlieb said life has finally settled down enough in Israel for the remaining investors there to move forward. The first two homes, which he had pulled off the market, will be put back up for sale in the next few months. After they’re finished, he’ll move down the block to build four more.
He can’t wait to see the first families move into the long-planned homes. That’s one of his favorite moments on any project – up there with the day construction finally begins.
'I'm a little afraid'
Every day, he prays for peace. He also hopes there will be more understanding – and compassion – here in the United States.
“I’m a little afraid of the antisemitism right now,” said Gotlieb, who is 39 and, for many years, thought of prejudice as something from his grandparents’ era.
That’s another reason he was reluctant to talk about the stalled Tremont project. He wasn’t sure how people would react to the story, to the property’s ties to families in Israel.
“I was afraid that people would judge me a little bit different – which I’ve never been afraid of in my life, until the turn of events that we’ve had,” he said. “And I was afraid that this site could get vandalized or spray painted.”
He’s still nervous. But he also wants people to know the full story.
For years, Gotlieb and his father have bantered about how they should celebrate when they wrap up a tricky project. As small builders, they’ve dealt with lots of headaches, from the effects of a global pandemic to inflation and tariffs over the last few years.
“My dad, who’s 82, who’s Israeli, he always jokes that when we’re finally done with that project, we’re gonna get drunk. … I have yet to get drunk with him,” Gotlieb said, taking a deep breath to steady himself, followed by a wry laugh. “So maybe, this is the project.”
