Eaton Corp. plans to move its downtown headquarters and two suburban facilities into a new building in late 2012. Site work on the property, 53 acres at Chagrin Highlands, could start next week.
View full sizeEaton's headquarters plans include an office building with a 10-story tower flanked by five-story wings. A garage, shown on the right side of this rendering, will provide employees with free, indoor parking. The 53-acre campus also will feature a fitness center, a pond and about 2 miles of walking and running trails. Eaton Corp. broke ground today for its new corporate headquarters, a $170 million project that will move the Fortune 500 manufacturer from downtown Cleveland to Beachwood in late 2012.
Surrounded by tall grass, on a ridge high above much of Cuyahoga County, Eaton executives, politicians and members of the development team plunged gleaming shovels into a pile of dirt. The project developer, the Richard E. Jacobs Group, expects to begin site work next week and to start raising steel for the buildings early next year.
Eaton plans to move about 700 employees to the property, a 53-acre portion of Chagrin Highlands near Richmond and Harvard roads. The company's new headquarters will include a 580,000-square-foot office building, enclosed parking, a fitness facility and about 2 miles of walking and running trails through the surrounding meadows and woods.
"I see a place where our vision of one Eaton will continue to thrive," said Alexander "Sandy" Cutler, the company's chairman and chief executive officer, describing a world headquarters that will be the heart of a global business with 70,000 employees and customers spanning 150 countries.
The Beachwood campus not only will replace Eaton's headquarters, at 1111 Superior Ave., but also will house employees from the company's tele-computer center in Eastlake and its learning and technology center in Willoughby Hills.
View full sizeThis rendering shows the inside of the atrium in Eaton's planned headquarters building.Eaton, Cleveland's largest corporation and No. 4 in Northeast Ohio on the Fortune 500 list, announced its moving plans in fall 2008. The company first flirted with, then rejected a site in Cleveland, near the east bank of the Flats. Eaton said the waterfront site, bounded by a raised loop of railroad tracks, was too small and inflexible for its new headquarters. But politicos and insiders grumbled about disagreements over Cleveland city taxes and negotiations with the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority, which owns the waterfront property.
Speaking to a small crowd gathered under a tent Thursday, Beachwood Mayor Merle Gorden thanked Eaton for choosing his city. Under a joint economic development agreement, Beachwood will split income tax revenues created by the project with Cleveland, which owned the Chagrin Highlands property and sold it to Eaton.
"We know you had the ability, and still have the ability, to go wherever you want" Gorden said.
The new site offers room for additional development, and Eaton's plans would support about 1,000 employees.
Embracing a pond, the office building will consist of two five-story wings flanking a 10-story tower. The 10th floor, with views of downtown Cleveland and Lake Erie, will be used for a conference room and dining area. Cutler and other executives will occupy offices scattered throughout the lower floors of the building.
Lisa Patt-McDaniel, director of Ohio's development department, applauded Eaton's decision to stay in the state. She described a smooth collaboration between Eaton and various public partners, who put together an incentives package worth more than $90 million. The state promised Eaton loans, tax credits and grants, part of a complex financing deal that also involves Beachwood and the Port. The Warrensville Heights and Beachwood school systems agreed to sacrifice a portion of anticipated property tax revenues from the project as part of a tax-increment financing deal to develop the site.
View full sizeVisitors approaching Eaton's planned headquarters will see a central pond, framed by the office building."Once this building is up and you're ready to expand again, we stand ready to partner with you," Patt-McDaniel told Eaton officials during the groundbreaking event.
After the ceremony, Cutler acknowledged that the size of Eaton's planned building grew slightly as the project evolved -- and as Eaton budgeted for its own growth. The company aims to achieve top-line revenue growth of 12 percent to 14 percent annually, through 2014, he said.
Eaton makes products including electrical components and systems for power quality, distribution and control. The company, which reported $11.9 billion in sales last year, plans to use several of its own products, such as switches, power supplies and panel-boards, in its new building. Designed to consume 30 percent less energy and 40 percent less water than a conventional building, the new headquarters could be certified as a green building by the U.S. Green Building Council.