The stalled makeover of Cleveland's Erieview Tower is moving again after developers locked in the last piece of a $218 million financing puzzle, clearing the way for Ohio's first W Hotel, 215 new apartments, and a rebuilt retail galleria at the base of the 40-story skyscraper. The project, which stalled out while hotel financing was being arranged, secured its full funding in August, according to public records.
The financing breakthrough centers on a $93.4 million loan from Nuveen Green Capital, provided through the Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy program, known as C-PACE, which lets property owners borrow for green-building upgrades and repay the debt through long-term property-tax assessments. As reported by News 5 Cleveland, the deal is the largest C-PACE transaction ever closed in Ohio, and Anthony Delfre, a managing director at Brown Gibbons Lang & Company, said the financing was restructured to use a single lender across the entire campus. The rest of the capital stack includes federal and state tax credits, a Cuyahoga County loan, a $20 million loan from Eriebank, city incentives including a property-tax abatement, and a sales-tax break on building materials from the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority, according to the same report.
A Hotel Brand New to Ohio, Built Inside a 1964 Tower
Erieview Tower opened in 1964 as the centerpiece of a 163-acre downtown urban renewal master plan authored by architect I.M. Pei, and the building itself was designed by modernist firm Harrison & Abramovitz, standing 529 feet tall as the fifth-tallest building in Cleveland, according to Wikipedia. The Cleveland Public Library Digital Gallery catalogs the original "Cleveland Erieview: general neighborhood renewal plan," dated November 22, 1960. The tower's lower floors will now house the W Cleveland, a 210-room hotel that is part of Marriott International's family of brands, with meeting spaces extending into the connected Galleria at Erieview. Rockwell Group, the firm that designed the original W Hotel in New York, is designing the Cleveland property, per the station's report.
Kassouf family-led investors bought Erieview Tower, the Galleria, and its garage in 2018 and signed a contract with Marriott in 2020, but the project experienced delays while financing for the hotel was arranged, pushing back an original 2025 renovation start. Elias Kassouf, a principal with Erieview Development, said the project could be completed despite repeated hurdles, the outlet notes. TurnDev is managing the project, and interior demolition on the tower was already underway in early 2025.
215 Apartments Carrying the W Name for the First Time
Above the hotel floors, the 17th through 28th floors will become 215 apartments carrying the W brand — the first time Marriott International has developed W-branded units built exclusively for long-term rental rather than for-sale condominiums anywhere in the world, according to a PR Newswire statement. The units, ranging from studios to two-bedrooms sized between 500 and 1,200 square feet, will give tenants access to hotel services and amenities, including in-room dining, turndown service, and room-cleaning options, plus a shared spa and fitness center, per the station's report.
The redevelopment preserves roughly 240,000 square feet of Class A office space in the tower, and separate elevator banks and entrances are planned for hotel guests, apartment tenants, and office workers so the uses don't collide. A restaurant and bar is planned for the tower's 38th floor, offering views of Cleveland and Lake Erie and led by a celebrity chef, alongside a separate first-floor restaurant. The tower and its connected Galleria together occupy about five acres between East Ninth and East 12th streets, north of St. Clair Avenue, with a parking garage holding roughly 450 cars.
Legislative Tweaks Kept the Clock From Running Out
Cleveland City Council advanced an emergency ordinance in April amending the project's C-PACE loan terms, extending repayment from 25 to 27 years and deferring special-assessment collections until 2027, according to Documenters. City officials structured the amendment to keep direct city financial liability at zero while giving the project room to align its debt schedule with the delayed construction timeline caused by the hotel financing negotiations.
That flexibility comes with strings attached. Cleveland's Community Benefits Scorecard, tied to an $18.6 million projected city assistance package for the project, requires that 20% of construction worker hours go to Cleveland residents, alongside subcontracting targets of 15% minority-owned, 7% female-owned, and 8% small-business participation, as Hoodline previously reported. Cleveland adopted these incentive-linked benefit agreements after the Ohio Supreme Court invalidated Cleveland's mandatory Fannie Lewis Law residency-hiring requirement in 2019.
The Kassouf Family's Growing East Ninth Street Footprint
The Erieview overhaul is only one piece of the Kassouf family's expanding downtown holdings. Companies tied to the family also bought Ohio Savings Plaza and Park Plaza for $4.25 million, and in May 2026 picked up the 800 Superior Avenue tower and its attached garage for $4 million, giving them a cluster of office and parking assets along the East Ninth Street corridor, a strategy Hoodline detailed in its coverage of the 800 Superior deal. Elias Kassouf has said he plans to renovate and maintain those acquired properties as offices.
The Erieview redevelopment fits into a broader wave of downtown Cleveland reinvention: more than 3.5 million square feet of obsolete office space was converted into residential and mixed-use properties between 2016 and 2026, cutting the central business district's office inventory by 18%, according to InnoWave Studio. Downtown Cleveland's resident population has grown 12% between 2019 and 2026, reaching roughly 21,000 residents at a 91% occupancy rate. According to a City of Cleveland report, Greater Downtown has 37,000 residents, accounting for 10 percent of the City's population, and has recorded a 21.8 percent growth in occupied housing. Developers are targeting late 2027 or early 2028 for the Erieview complex to open its doors.
