Bedrock wants to build an eight-story, 550-space parking garage in Cleveland's Gateway District, wrapped in more than 135,000 decorative tiles and with ground-floor retail or office space. The project, which would rise between Prospect Avenue and Huron Road just north of Rocket Arena, is still working its way through city review, and it comes with a complication: a two-story building tied to a once-beloved jazz and blues club would have to come down first.
A Garage Dressed Up as Public Art
According to News 5 Cleveland, the garage's facade would be screened with more than 135,000 tiles designed to shift in the wind, concealing parking on the second through eighth floors while the entire first floor is reserved for commercial space — retail, offices, or some mix of both — totaling 20,000 to 22,000 square feet. Bedrock has said that footprint would be large enough to accommodate some grocers, though no tenant has been named. The developer plans to work with the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland to solicit tile design proposals from five Ohio-based artists, whose work would customize the wall tiles' colors and patterns to create a pixelated mural effect, per the same report. Early renderings also show video boards planned for the garage's west side and along street-facing stairwells and elevator shafts.
The Cleveland City Design Review Committee gave the garage proposal an initial recommendation with caveats, and the project still requires further public review before construction can begin, including multiple planning commission approvals and review by the Cleveland Board of Zoning Appeals. The garage's current design does not yet meet all city requirements for new downtown parking structures, the outlet reported. Committee members generally praised the garage's artistic concept even as they flagged those outstanding issues.
A Jazz Club's Last Stand
The sticking point is demolition. News 5 Cleveland reported that Bedrock's garage plans call for tearing down the two-story building at 620 Prospect Avenue, a structure built in the early 1900s that most recently housed Mr. Albert's Men's World; the Loop Lounge, a jazz and blues club, operated there in the 1940s and 1950s and once hosted performers including Dizzy Gillespie, Billie Holiday and Dinah Washington. Cleveland Magazine, however, described the building slated for demolition as a 120-year-old structure at 618 Prospect that had recently housed Mister Albert's Men's World.
The building sits empty today and is not a protected city landmark, and it falls just outside the boundaries of a nearby national historic district, according to News 5 Cleveland's reporting. Still, the history weighs on at least one person watching the process: Keith Brown said allowing demolition of the building is difficult for him personally. Design review committee members encouraged Bedrock to acknowledge the Loop Lounge's legacy by preserving part of the building's facade or incorporating references to Black music and culture into the new project. Bedrock has said it salvaged sections of the former venue's decorative tile floor and may reuse that material elsewhere on the broader site. The developer has emphasized that it sought initial feedback to keep the public process moving rather than formal demolition approval, and the committee's role is to send recommendations on to the Cleveland City Planning Commission rather than issue final sign-off itself.
Filling a Parking Gap Near Rocket Arena
The garage would also replace some parking recently eliminated in the district. Bedrock previously demolished an old, crumbling garage at 611 Huron Road and replaced it with a temporary surface lot, per News 5 Cleveland. Bedrock, the Detroit-based real estate arm of Dan Gilbert's Rock family of businesses, and Rock Entertainment Group anticipate growing demand for nearby parking as Cosm opens and Gilbert's new WNBA team, the Cleveland Sirens, starts playing at Rocket Arena in 2028. Gilbert also owns the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Cosm, an immersive entertainment venue planned just west of the garage site, had its ceremonial groundbreaking in April, with Bedrock and Rock Entertainment Group targeting an opening by late summer of 2027, the station reported. Bedrock is also developing plans for the northwest corner of the same block, at East Fourth Street and Prospect, and representative Dan Whalen said the company is getting closer to publicly releasing those details. Whalen said the garage's art and architecture are intended to make it stand out, and that the first-floor commercial space is being left open-ended deliberately to address downtown Cleveland's needs — needs that took on new weight after Heinen's closed its downtown store in late July. Whalen said Bedrock will carefully choose tenants who can succeed and complement the businesses already in the area.
Part of a Larger Gateway District Push
Bedrock's evolving plans for the block also include a plaza, seating, an event area and a preserved pedestrian walkway connecting Prospect and Huron, according to News 5 Cleveland. The garage traces back to Bedrock's January 2023 purchase of the roughly 3-acre former nuCLEus site from Stark Enterprises, a parcel that has cycled through several visions over the past decade — a 54-story tower under the original 2014 nuCLEus plan, as Cleveland.com reported, and a pair of 24-story towers atop a six-floor garage in a 2019 revision. Cleveland Magazine has reported that Bedrock representatives describe the Rock Block's third phase as potentially including residential, office, hotel and/or structured-parking uses, per Cleveland Magazine, which separately described the new eight-level garage as offering roughly 600 parking spaces — a figure that conflicts with News 5 Cleveland's reported count of 550.
City planning records show the project moving through the approval pipeline over the past year. An August 2025 Cleveland City Planning Commission draft agenda listed a new commercial construction project at East Fourth Street and Huron Road, represented by Nora Romanoff of Bedrock, with conceptual approval noted. A February 2026 commission agenda listed final approval for a project at the same intersection represented by Nora Romanoff.
The garage arrives amid a broader wave of investment downtown. More than $5 billion in public and private development was active in downtown Cleveland in 2025, according to a Downtown Cleveland Alliance report that also pointed to 82% average storefront occupancy and a net increase of 12 businesses that year, and that named Rocket Arena among the event-driven destinations driving spikes in downtown activity. Separately, Bedrock, Rock Entertainment Group and Live Nation are planning a 6,200-person open-air concert venue along the Cuyahoga River, located off West Third Street next to the Cleveland Clinic Global Peak Performance Center, a sports-medicine hub and future Cavs training complex. The city's downtown-area design review committee gave final approval to the amphitheater's interior while requesting further review of its exterior walls, landscaping and sidewalks; that venue is scheduled to open by spring of 2028.
The parking crunch the garage is meant to address isn't limited to one project. The city has also been rolling out special-event parking around Huntington Bank Field and in the Gateway District near Rocket Arena and Progressive Field, according to Axios Cleveland, which also noted that downtown parking enforcement now runs from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. seven days a week.
