CLEVELAND, Ohio – Cuyahoga County Executive Chris Ronayne’s preferred site for a new jail in Garfield Heights comes with a higher sticker price than other options the county has considered, but it’s not the most expensive currently under review, records show.
Ronayne submitted legislation to County Council this week to purchase three parcels totaling 72.1 acres at Granger Road and Transportation Boulevard for $38.7 million.
The proposed purchase will be formally introduced at Council’s regular meeting at 5 p.m. on Tuesday and referred to committee for discussion.
“The primary goal of the agreement is to purchase land to be used for construction of the Cuyahoga County Central Campus,” a copy of the resolution obtained by cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer reads.
Ronayne previously laid out his vision for that campus plan in a conversation with cleveland.com’s editorial board this week. He touted the site’s size, which he hopes will one day accommodate not only the jail, but also the Diversion Center and other justice-related support functions.
He specifically touted the site for its central location in the county and “green” history, meaning it requires little to no environmental remediation. That was a selling point, Ronayne told the board, because of the contentious debate over the county’s last preferred location on Transport Road, which required remediation to make safe from several contaminants, including cancer-causing benzene.
But picking a site that’s already shovel-ready could save the county money, he argued, rejecting the apparent second-choice site on Kirby Avenue in Cleveland that he suspects will require “pretty significant” remediation.
“Of these two sites, we could get going faster, we could save money on the non-remediation needs (on the Garfield Heights site),” he said, also noting it would allow construction to begin sooner.
Cost comparison
Cleaning up the Kirby Avenue site would cost between $14.5 and $23.6 million, depending on if it includes all or just some of the seven potential parcels sought, records provided by the county show. The various sites once housed a number of industries that work with hazardous materials, including National Acme, Co., a battery factory and a mustard agent disposal area and experimentation lab.
But that was just the minimum cost.
Tacked on to that would be another $60 million in construction costs during the up-to-two years the county estimated it will take to remediate the property. Then there’s another $11.5 to $22 million to demolish the existing buildings on the property and prepare the site for construction, and $8.5 to $15 million to buy it, according to estimates from the county’s real estate consultant, CBRE Group.
Adding all of those costs to the county’s last-reported estimate of $750 million to build the jail, the total cost at the Kirby Avenue site could top out around $870 million.
Comparatively, the Garfield Heights property requires no remediation and only $850,000 for demolition and construction readiness, county records say. Adding in its proposed purchase price and the jail build, the total cost of the Garfield Heights site would be around $790 million.
Still, that’s more than the county planned to spend on the controversial Transport Road site.
That property was going to sell for $20 million, which included money to relocate the business operating there, but did not include the additional $7 million estimated for environmental cleanup required to ready the property for construction. The total cost to build a jail there would have been around $777 million.
The new purchase price for Garfield Heights is also significantly more than what the county was quoted last year, when it was named the county’s third choice for a jail location. Back then, the county said the owners, Craig Realty Group and stakeholder DiGeronimo Companies, were seeking $22 million, though that price only included 40.4 acres.
That cost broke down to about $550,000 per acre. If applied to the full 72 acres the county is seeking today, it would bring the total purchase price to $39.6 million, which is slightly more than the current asking price. However, that full acreage also includes a water detention area that is not developable.
The Garfield Heights property was once envisioned to be a $90 million office-and-retail project, anchored by JCPenney, Target and Lowe’s, but it lost financing during the recession and has sat undeveloped since.
CBRE estimated the current market value of the land up to $50 million, county records show. Its assessed value is $2.8 million, according to property records.
Campaign donor
Craig Realty and DiGeronimo Companies suggested the county buy the property last year, as the county was making a final attempt to review all potential sites for the jail. After review, then-Executive Armond Budish and members of council abandoned it in favor of the Transport Road site.
Ronayne revisited it, believing it is the county’s best option.
Ronayne has not disclosed, however, that the DiGeronimo family and some of their company employees contributed at least $37,000 to his campaign.
Campaign finance records show most of those donations came during a fundraising event on May 25, 2022, that raised a total of $40,000 for Ronayne’s campaign. From family members directly was $15,000 from Robert DiGeronimo’s company Victory Transport, $5,000 each from Robbie and Kevin DiGeronimo, $1,500 from Robert DiGeronimo, personally, and $250 from Richard DiGeronimo.
Another $2,000 came from Melissa Balser, the administrative assistant to the CEO of DiGeronimo Companies, and $1,000 from Brent Leslie, the company’s Chief Financial Officer.
Family members also made additional donations totaling at least $7,000, campaign records show.
When asked about the campaign donations, Ronayne’s spokeswoman Mary Louise Madigan reiterated that the Garfield Heights site is not only “the most safe and humane location” for inmates, but the most cost-effective, given construction can start sooner, “saving taxpayer dollars.” She also highlighted that the site is not currently in use, meaning the county will not need to pay for business relocation, as it would on the Kirby Avenue site.
She rejected any implication that Ronayne may have picked the site for any other reasons, noting that it became one of the county’s finalists under the previous administration for some of the same merits.
“Political contributions from anyone involved in ownership of the site has had zero bearing on the County’s process,” Madigan said. “Any suggestion otherwise is patently false.”
Cleveland.com reached out to DiGeronimo Companies for comment on the campaign donations and Ronayne’s decision to recommend the county buy the property.
Ronayne was previously scrutinized for giving a no-bid, $120,000 lobbying contract to a company whose president, Justin McCaulley, donated $10,000 to his campaign.