Severance developer launches website seeking community ideas

Severance businesses continue to close or move.

MPact Collective, a partner in the development of the forlorn, much-maligned Severance Town Center in Cleveland Heights, recently launched a website seeking the community’s ideas for redevelopment. 

According to Ryan Porter, MPact’s managing partner, who spoke at the April 21 meeting of Cleveland Heights City Council, the idea is to get residents thinking about potential future uses for Severance Town Center, and have them rank their choices using a crowdsourcing process.

Heights residents, business owners and stakeholders can register as users at www.severanceclevelandheights.com, then post their ideas along with a description and photos of what they’d like to see built at the site. They can also view others’ ideas and “like” them, similar to Facebook or another social media platform. 

“We’re trying to get people to focus on the kinds of uses we need at Severance, whether those are residential, retail, recreational, commercial or entertainment,” Porter said. “What are the uses the community wants; then let’s figure out what’s appropriate and what’s actually feasible.”

The registration process, which asks users about their connection to Severance, helps to ensure that people contributing ideas to the site are Heights residents or have a stake in the community, he added.

The ideas posted to the website that receive the most votes will be considered by the developer. “I’ve done this in multiple places, and it’s amazing the kind of momentum you can develop, plus you can have a real conversation about the feasibility of those ideas,” Porter said. 

He emphasized that not all ideas would make the final cut, however. “It’s one thing to say, ‘We want a bowling alley,’” he said. “It’s another thing to say this is financially feasible in today’s reality.” 

Meanwhile, MPact has already developed some ideas of its own. The project will be built in multiple phases and will include large apartment buildings, condominiums, park areas, a hotel, and new retail space. The first targeted phase would include affordable workforce/mixed-income housing, market-rate rentals, a new condominium building and some ground-floor retail. It would be built on the north parking lot for the Regal Cinemas buildings, which would eventually be torn down to make way for future phasing.

Porter stressed that the project would be a “long-term effort.” He told council, “It took 30 years for the mall to fall apart, and the new Severance Town Center won’t be built overnight.”  

MPact’s goal is to have the site rezoned by the end of the year in order to prepare it for development. Porter admitted that the timeline was tight but claimed it was doable, and that the developer had every intention of following through with developing the site.

“The way this works is that I act as master developer to sort of set up the game board, and then I bring in other developers under the zoning and land use policy we all put in place,” he said. 

Severance’s owner, Namdar Realty Group, signed a joint-venture agreement with MPact that runs through March 2026. Between now and then, in order to have its contract with Namdar extended, MPact must prove that Namdar can contribute land to a future redevelopment at an agreed upon valuation. MPact’s goal is to divide the site into parcels and bring in multiple developers that focus on different products (e.g., apartments vs. hotels) in order to redevelop the site under a new form-based zoning code.

Next steps include a Crowdsourced Conversations event with FutureHeights slated for Wednesday, June 25, 6:30–8 p.m.; location to come.