CLEVELAND, Ohio - The city of Cleveland intends to move its police headquarters into the building that houses cleveland.com and was once home to The Plain Dealer.
Mayor Frank Jackson, in a Monday interview with cleveland.com, said the new location will be more cost effective than the current headquarters at the Justice Center complex downtown. It will allow improvements to technology and space to consolidate offices that now are scattered around the city.
The project is a $59.5 million deal that includes the purchase and alteration of the building at 1801 Superior Ave. The package includes a $19.5 million purchase agreement for the site, with some negotiating still to come.
The city has engaged GLP Superior Ltd., led by Fred Geis, to buy and renovate the property.
The target for completing the move to the new headquarters is next spring, police Chief Calvin Williams said.
City Council introduced legislation needed to approval the deal at its meeting Monday evening. Council approval will be needed for the deal to proceed.
Council's Safety Committee is expected to have a hearing on the proposed deal on Wednesday. The vote by the full council could come at its meeting July 18.
The move is part of part of a bigger plan to get the city out of the jail business and out of the Justice Center downtown.
The building, constructed in 2000, will have to be renovated for the police department. When finished, it will provide a much more welcoming environment for visitors and a better work environment for officers, Williams said.
Ultimately about 600 people will work in the police headquarters, Williams said. About 200 of them will be civilians. Another 100 or so will be command and administrative staff. The remainder will be police investigatory units.
Under a deal the city struck last fall with Cuyahoga County, the county agreed to buy the current police headquarters for $9.25 million. The title of the building will be transferred on Oct. 2, 2018.
Once the deal closes, the city will be able to stay in the Justice Center temporarily, but it will have to pay rent to the county. That rental cost put pressure on the city to settle where its new headquarters would be.
"What we don't want to do is to pay [the money from selling the building] all back in a lease," Jackson said.
Last June, Cleveland City Council approved a deal the Jackson administration negotiated with Cuyahoga County under which the county will take over all jail operations and the city will close its lockup at the Justice Center.
Under the deal, the city will pay the county $99 a day per person to house its prisoners at the county jail, which also is part of the Justice Center complex. The long-discussed deal is expected to save Cleveland about $5 million a year.
In July, the city hired Colliers International, a global real estate broker with offices in Cleveland, to help find a suitable site for the police headquarters. It helped narrow the search to three potential sites.
The cleveland.com site, built in 2000, was the only one that didn't involve new construction.
In 2014, The Plain Dealer moved part of its editorial staff into offices at Tower City Center. Copy editing and design staff joined the production staff at the newspaper's Tiedeman Road facility in Brooklyn.
Cleveland.com moved into newly renovated offices at 1801 Superior that same year. The building also provides office space to other tenants, including the YMCA of Greater Cleveland and the Center for Economic Opportunities of Greater Cleveland.
The city, through a developer, will help those tenants find new quarters, Williams said.
Cleveland.com will move to new quarters downtown, a change Editor and President Chris Quinn said will benefit the company, just as the new headquarters benefits the city. The plan is for Advance Ohio's staff to move into the Western Reserve building on West 9th Street.
"This is a good move for us and, I think, for the police," Quinn said. "The content and sales teams at Advance Ohio will move into what is becoming a vibrant corner of downtown, near the Flats East Bank. And our current building, which is beautiful but under-used, will see full occupancy, which will be healthy for the neighborhood."
George Rodrigue, president of Plain Dealer Publishing Co, which owns the building, said: "We're glad that after a series of arms-length negotiations we've been able to reach agreement in principle on terms of the sale. The building has a proud history, and we hope it will serve the needs of the police department well."
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