Severance Town Center has sat mostly empty for years, and now the citizens group that has pushed hardest for its revival says even the paperwork has disappeared. Larry Nowak, head of the Severance Action Group, appeared before Cleveland Heights City Council this week to demand an update on a redevelopment plan he says has effectively gone missing.
Nowak told council that no substantive progress appears to have been made by master developer MPact Collective beyond a suggested zoning revision, according to a statement he made on September 22 as reported by Cleveland.com. The Severance Action Group, an independent volunteer citizens committee, is waiting on a report from Avison Young, the consulting firm the city retained to evaluate a proposed rezoning overlay district for the 40-acre site. The city's planning commission recommended that overlay district back in November 2025, but council has deferred a vote awaiting the consultant's feedback, according to the Heights Observer.
Long Island-based MPact Collective signed a master developer agreement with property owner Namdar Realty Group back in June 2024, establishing a 20-month planning window to secure city rezoning, organize tax-increment financing, and recruit co-developers, per WKYC. Cleveland.com notes that Namdar and MPact had been negotiating a proposed redevelopment plan for 18 months, with MPact beginning work on a possible transformation of the shopping center in early 2024. That planning window is closing, and the Severance Action Group's own involvement goes back even further — the group met with city officials as far back as 2022.
A College Deal Hangs in the Balance
Among the proposals the group is pushing for the site is a medical campus woven into a mix of residential, commercial, office, and green space. Pepper Pike-based Ursuline College has shown interest in a satellite campus at Severance, but the timing is precarious: Ursuline is affiliated with Gannon University through a merger finalized in January 2025 that will fold Ursuline's operations into Gannon by December 2026, according to Higher Ed Dive. Gannon and Ursuline may need to decide whether to pursue the satellite campus sooner rather than later, and Nowak said the option is at risk the longer the city's process drags on.
The shopping center carries outsized significance as the largest single developable property remaining on Cleveland's near-east side, per Cleveland.com's reporting. It opened in 1963 as Ohio's first enclosed shopping mall before the original structure was replaced in the 1990s by the current open-air plaza, a history also documented on Wikipedia. MetroHealth has already shown that non-retail investment can work on the property, having opened a $42 million, 112-bed behavioral health hospital at 10 Severance Circle in October 2022 — the largest public or private investment in behavioral health in Northeast Ohio in at least 30 years, according to MetroHealth. That 79,000-square-foot facility sits adjacent to the main retail area, where Hoodline previously covered a mental health summit hosted there.
Vacancies Pile Up While Owner Sells Off Parcels
Namdar Realty Group purchased the property at an online auction for $10.5 million in 2016, per Cleveland.com, though the Heights Observer has reported the figure as $10.4 million. The center has since lost Office Max, and current vacancies include the former Marshalls and Borders Bookstore spaces. Namdar has also put up for sale the parcel containing Home Depot's former neighboring Office Depot property, continuing a pattern of selling off individual parcels that included a $13.7 million sale of the Home Depot parcel to an outside investor in 2019, the Heights Observer has reported.
Despite those losses, the center remains commercially anchored by Dave's Market and The Home Depot under long-term leases, according to Cleveland Scene. The Heights Observer has also reported that Namdar has accumulated code violations and lawsuits across multiple states tied to its practice of buying foreclosed shopping centers to collect rent without heavy reinvestment. That pattern isn't unique to Cleveland Heights — Namdar is also the owner behind Westland Mall, where Hoodline recently reported on a major price cut drawing developer interest. In California, the city of Citrus Heights filed a public nuisance lawsuit against Namdar last year seeking over $565,000 in penalties for unaddressed code violations at Sunrise Mall, according to the Citrus Heights Sentinel.
Group Pushes City to Take the Lead
Cleveland Heights officials said they had no updates on the form-based zoning framework ahead of Monday's council meeting, and the council limited public comments to three minutes, per Cleveland.com. The city has separately made progress on getting its bond rating reinstated, Nowak noted, even as the zoning question lingers unresolved.
Frustrated by the pace, the Severance Action Group laid out a list of recommendations for the city. The group wants Cleveland Heights to make public all materials it has received from Avison Young about the proposed overlay zone, to begin serious discussions about becoming the first buyer for the property, and to have its planning department work with the Severance Action Group and others — including MPact — on a request for proposals built around the group's earlier concept drawings. The group is also urging the city to open a direct dialogue with Namdar itself, with Nowak saying the owner has shown a willingness to move to a more reasonable price for selling its properties.
Nowak said the Severance Action Group believes it is running out of time to waste, a sentiment rooted in years of advocacy that trace back to the group's founding in early 2021 as a committee of nonprofit FutureHeights, according to the Heights Observer. It later became an independent citizen advocacy group, working with local planners to envision housing and park space connecting the north and south sides of Cleveland Heights. The group says it and nearly everyone it has worked with are ready to help — if the city and its partners finally move.
