Corporate records make the link between Hudson Holdings of Delray Beach and the 925 Building, best known as the former Huntington Building.
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A hot rumor in local real estate circles moved a bit closer to reality this week, with the formation of two companies that link a Florida investment group to the hulking and largely vacant 925 Building on Euclid Avenue.
Records filed with the Ohio Secretary of State make the connection between Hudson Holdings of Delray Beach and the downtown Cleveland building, best known as the former Huntington Building or the historic Union Trust Building. Hudson, according to its website, is a mixed-use developer that favors downtown locations and works with historic buildings and distressed landmarks.
Corporation records dated Monday show that HH Cleveland Huntington L.P. and Hudson Cleveland Real Estate Manager LLC, two newly formed companies, are tied to the 925 Euclid Ave. address and to Andrew "Avi" Greenbaum, one of Hudson's principals.
During the past five months, Greenbaum and Jennifer Hebrock, Hudson's director of special projects, have rebuffed interview requests from The Plain Dealer.
In February, they politely shrugged off a reporter's questions at the grand opening of the downtown Heinen's grocery store. This week, they didn't answer emailed requests for comment on the corporation filings, the first public indicators that a potential sale is in the works.
Chaim Schochet of Optima Ventures, the 925 Building's Miami-based owner, declined to comment. So did Terry Coyne of the Newmark Grubb Knight Frank real estate brokerage, which represents Optima's downtown portfolio.
The 21-story 925 Building is missing from Optima's property-management website. For a few days in February, though, the property popped up on Hudson's website - then disappeared. Since then, the website address for what Hudson called the Huntington Building has redirected users to the company's home page.
It's no surprise to see a potential suitor stepping in to buy the property, which totals 1.3 million square feet of mostly vacant office space with a sprawling bank lobby and warren-like retail arcade.
With office leases expiring, the 925 Building was a makeover candidate even before Optima paid $18.5 million for it in 2010. Since then, major tenants including Huntington Bank and the EY accounting firm have departed for other, newer downtown addresses, leaving the building more than 90 percent empty.
In 2012, Optima made an unsuccessful bid to land Cuyahoga County as an anchor tenant for a redeveloped 925 Building. The county instead opted to move into a new office building a block south on East Ninth Street.
Last year, Optima and Vintage Development Group of Willoughby sought a large state preservation tax credit for an extensive overhaul of the building. That credit - a special award for "catalytic" projects - instead went to a planned restoration of Cincinnati Music Hall.
Vintage's state tax-credit application, obtained by The Plain Dealer through a public records request, outlined a $247 million project. At the time, Vintage and unidentified partners had a deal to buy the 925 Building from Optima and a plan to remake the property with an 82-room hotel, 246 apartments, 60 condominiums and 660,000 square feet of offices and retail.
That purchase, set to close in January, never happened.
Now, it appears, another potential buyer has stepped in.
On its website, Hudson describes projects that involve housing, shopping, offices and hotels. In April, the company bought the historic Starks Building in Louisville, Kentucky, for a mixed-use conversion project that could include a hotel and apartments. At just under 400,000 square feet, the Starks Building is a third of the size of the 925 Building, a behemoth that contained the world's largest banking lobby when it opened in 1924.
That lobby sits empty now, even as office workers, apartment dwellers, diners and shoppers have revived the long-shuttered former Ameritrust complex across the street. The retail corridors in the 925 Building's basement are quiet, though longtime tenants like Rickey C. Tanno Jewelers continue to soldier on.
"I would say it's about the same, except that we don't see anyone in the building as we used to," said Jim Havach, a director at the Spieth, Bell, McCurdy & Newell Co. law firm, which rents 21,000 square feet on the building's 20th floor. "Obviously, there's not much traffic."
Founded in 1867, Spieth Bell is an original tenant in 925 Building, where the firm has jumped between floors over the last 91 years. Havach and Jim Bright, the firm's president, said they met with Hudson's Greenbaum a few months ago and heard about a redevelopment plan that could involve apartments, offices and a hotel. At that point, the attorneys heard that a sale might occur in May.
Bright said Spieth Bell has an attachment to the building but doesn't necessarily want to live through several years of construction.
"We obviously hope that the deal closes," Havach said, "even though that doesn't necessarily un-complicate our lives. It would be nice to see this building have a new life, because right now it's not really an optimum situation for Ninth and Euclid to have."
Joe Marinucci, chief executive officer at the Downtown Cleveland Alliance, wouldn't discuss any potential sale of the building or redevelopment prospects.
When Vintage was eying its mixed-use makeover, the company estimated that a renovated 925 Building could support more than 2,000 new jobs and lend momentum to nearly $500 million in additional development within several blocks. Such a project also would stabilize the last troubled corner at Euclid and East Ninth and fill one of the few lingering voids between Public Square and Playhouse Square.
"If placed at water level on the Niagara River just below Niagara Falls on the American side, the 925 Building would tower over 100 feet above the top of the falls and would stretch half the distance from the American side to Goat Island," Vintage wrote in the company's state tax-credit application.
"The 925 Building occupies a volume of 20,000,000 cubic feet," the company added. "If 20 million cubes, each measuring one cubic foot, were stretched end-to-end, they would reach from New York City across the Atlantic Ocean to London, England. If spread out over a single plane, the 925 Building's ... floor area would cover Cleveland's Public Square (and connecting streets) three times over."