EAST CLEVELAND, Ohio — Mayor Sandra Morgan remembers how vibrant Nela Park can be.
When she was a child, Morgan’s family made an annual pilgrimage to the campus to see the spectacular holiday light displays. At that time, spectators could still drive through the 95-acre campus, a property often described as the world’s first industrial park.
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Now Nela Park is up for sale. And Morgan, who took the helm in long-struggling East Cleveland in January, hopes the birthplace of innovation can become a beacon again.
“The spirits of giants walk this campus,” she said during an interview this week.
The unusual property is hitting the market at a key moment for East Cleveland, a cash-strapped suburb working its way through receivership. The city has new leadership, from the mayor’s office to council chambers. Bipartisan state lawmakers and economic development officials are eager to help.
“We have been closed off a little bit for the past few years,” Morgan said. “But now East Cleveland’s open for business.”
That doesn’t mean Nela Park will be an easy, or quick, sell.
“We’re just getting started,” said Bryce Sylvester, managing director of Cushman & Wakefield-Cresco Real Estate, the brokerage handling the listing.
The longtime home of GE Lighting, the picturesque campus includes 26 buildings, many of them constructed between 1911 and 1924.
That’s more than 1 million square feet.
Most of that space is vacant. Savant, the company that bought GE’s lighting division in 2020, still leases one building. There are only two other tenants: A public charter school and a rehabilitation facility for children with autism.
“It might take a bit for people to get a feel for how it can be repurposed,” Sylvester said of the campus. “So I think the whole first year is about education, seeing how the market might respond from a pricing standpoint and then reacting to all of that.”
The current landlord, Phoenix Investors, bought the property for $5 million in 2022. The company, based in Milwaukee, brought in the school and rehab facility and considered turning some of the historic buildings into apartments.
But after a few years of shouldering the park, with its system of underground tunnels and central heating plant, Phoenix is trying to move on.
“It was time for them,” Sylvester said. “They don’t have a huge local presence.”
The team at Cresco is pitching the park as a mixed-use redevelopment opportunity, with the potential to blend offices, research, education, housing and other uses.
An on-site electric substation might appeal to small manufacturers who need swift access to power, Sylvester said.
“We want to bring good-paying jobs to this location,” he said. “Most importantly, with a development team that’s got experience and capital to deploy.”
He doesn’t view Nela Park as a major data center play. But a small data hall could be one piece of a broader project, particularly if it could go into an existing building.
“Could I see that being somewhere here? Maybe,” he said. “But I would say that we need to approach that in collaboration with the city. It’s crucial that we are on the same page. … The mayor, council and our team is really tight on what we need to do here.”
Most of the property is zoned for industry, including medical and lab uses. But 20 acres, which spill over the East Cleveland border into Cleveland Heights, are zoned for single-family homes.
Morgan isn’t making any assumptions about what the campus will become.
She would love to see a new owner build on GE Lighting’s legacy of innovation. And she hopes a buyer will respect the history of the buildings — even if they can’t all be saved.
“I recognize that every building may not be able to be preserved,” she said. “I mean, that’s business, right?”
The park, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is eligible for federal and state historic tax credits to help offset renovation costs. And Morgan said the city, despite its financial struggles, is open to discussions about incentives.
“The city of East Cleveland still has a few arrows in its quiver,” she said.
Morgan knows the future of Nela Park will look different.
She’s not expecting a return of the holiday light shows, which recently ended, or the resurrection of family driving tours of the property.
“But I think that whoever is on this campus will contribute to East Cleveland in their own way,” she said. “And we look forward to that … because I know that the person or the organization that comes to East Cleveland and takes on the challenges, honestly, in some cases, of being on this campus is going to love being here.”
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.
