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TRASH REMOVAL

Where others saw a landfill, McGill pictured a perfect retail site

BY IAN RITTER

For years John McGill drove by a site in the south Cleveland suburb of Garfield Heights, Ohio, and thought it a great place for a retail project. The location, on a hill overlooking Interstate 480, is highly visible, passed by about 180,000 cars a day, says McGill, president of Solon, Ohio-based development firm McGill Property Group. The nearest center with major big-box retailers is 10 miles away.

Today McGill is realizing those retail project daydreams, in the form of City View Center, the 650,000-square-foot power center he is putting up there.

But nothing worth having ever comes easily, as McGill can attest. Ideal as the site may have looked on the surface, there were problems with it. And Garfield Heights Mayor Thomas Longo is refreshingly economical about what some of those were.

“It was a dump,” the mayor said.

This was no mere aesthetic observation: The site was a landfill from the late 1960s through the early ’70s.

McGill Property had trouble buying the property. Its former private owner had wanted to see offices go up there, and indeed that was what the land was zoned for. But the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency would have to sign off in any event.

There were other obstacles, enough to give anyone a serious case of second thoughts.

But McGill really did want that retail center, and he was determined to see everything through to the bitter end. “I needed to know whether this was a dream that made sense, or if it’s something we’d never accomplish,” he said.

Happily, in time, things began to fall into place, and the firm managed to get things moving with a little help from the city and state, including environmental authorities. After the landholder died, his family decided late last year to sell to McGill Property. Soon after that, the city not only rezoned the land for retail but also created $10 million in tax increment financing for road and utility improvements.

A little gas trouble
Among the site’s environmental imperfections was the presence of combustible methane gas, so McGill worked with government officials and private consultants to build a grid of pipes and fans to disperse the gas.

Former dump or no, the site’s location, along with the area’s population numbers and commuter traffic levels, has helped line up tenants, with Bed Bath & Beyond, Dick’s Sporting Goods and Wal-Mart among those on board. Garfield Heights (population 30,000) also happens to be located in Cuyahoga, the state’s most populous county.

Furthermore, tenants know they’re dealing with a firm that has a track record. McGill Property, which was founded in 1998 as Heritage Development Co. by Bert L. Wolstein, former chairman and CEO of Developers Diversified Realty Corp., has built 11 centers. (Wolstein died in May, and the company changed its name in August.)

McGill Property started the project’s site work and grading in February. McGill says it plans to open City View this summer.

Every development poses problems in the building, to be sure, problems that translate into costs. The ground beneath this project is soft, for instance. That means the foundations must be reinforced, and the firm calculates that the $70 million City View is costing about $25 per square foot more than a similar-size center built under normal conditions.

Even so, the project has charms all its own, says McGill.

City View will be bringing in tax revenues from a site that had hitherto produced nothing. There are plans to build some 1 million square feet of offices nearby, which, together with the retail development, could bring in about $30 million a year in taxes, the mayor says.

“We’re taking a pile of trash and making it into a treasure for the [area],” said McGill.

More succinctly, the firm aims to turn that former pile of trash into a future stash of cash.