CLEVELAND — Plans for Ohio’s first Black-led, freestanding birthing center cleared a huge hurdle Friday when the Cleveland City Planning Commission gave the building a green light.
Now, Birthing Beautiful Communities expects to break ground this fall, putting the $12.5 million project on schedule to open by late 2025. The three-story building will rise in the city’s Hough neighborhood at East 65th Street and Chester Avenue.
The project marks an expansion into medical care for Birthing Beautiful Communities, a nonprofit that already provides pregnancy support. The group is dedicated to reducing the high Black maternal and infant death rate – a big challenge in Cleveland and across the state.
Khrys Shefton wiped away tears after the planning commission’s vote.
“I’ve been working on this project for eight years, through three different employers,” said Shefton, the nonprofit’s chief of growth and expansion.
That journey was a bumpy one.
Birthing Beautiful Communities pursued several other potential sites before landing on Chester, on a 0.73-acre property largely comprised of city-owned lots.
Then, a few dozen neighbors mobilized to fight the project. They spoke up at public meetings. They signed a petition to oppose the construction of a healthcare facility on the long-vacant land. They wanted new single-family homes instead. Or green space.
They called the birthing center a potential nuisance, one that would bring strangers and unwanted traffic to their block.
And earlier this year, they filed an appeal to try to stop the city approval process. The city rejected that appeal, saying that the neighbors filed it too late and couldn’t challenge a preliminary vote on the building’s design.
On Friday, though, there wasn’t a whiff of opposition at Cleveland City Hall.
Only one neighbor, a longtime family doctor who lives on East 62nd Street, spoke up. And he applauded the project.
“There is still a big need in that area,” said Carl Robson, “and I think this is a great program to help fulfill that need.”
Members of the planning commission commended the project team for taking steps to address homeowners’ concerns about privacy and access. Drawings show that there will be a fence and trees on the north side of the property, where the site abuts two houses.
A small garden and walking path will bisect the gated parking lot. The building will sit along Chester, distanced from the homes.
“It’s very welcoming. It’s very joyful,” Katie Veasey Gillette, an associate principal at City Architecture, said while presenting the designs. “And we’re excited to really use this as an opportunity to change the narrative about how health care is delivered to Black woman in Northeast Ohio.”
The project is the first to move forward under Cleveland’s new form-based zoning code, which City Council approved early this month.
The updated zoning applies to only a handful of places right now, including Hough. It’s meant to encourage mixed-use, flexible development, including different types of housing and more walkable neighborhoods.
Under the form-based code, the birthing center won’t need any zoning variances – exceptions that add time and costs to many projects in Cleveland. With final planning commission approval, Birthing Beautiful Communities can get a building permit and start moving dirt.
The birthing center will accommodate 350 unmedicated, low-risk births each year, attended by midwives. It will accept private insurance, out-of-pocket payments and Medicaid.
Shefton said the facility will have a $5 million annual operating budget. It will include administrative offices and spaces for training birth attendants or doulas, hosting parenting and cooking classes, and expanding the nonprofit’s lineup of services.
“This is not just ’Let’s save Black women and babies,’” Shefton said. “This is also an economic development opportunity for the city of Cleveland.”
