ErieView Development has announced the closing of financing for the redevelopment of Erieview Tower, a historic 1964 tower in Cleveland, into a mixed-use complex combining Ohio’s first W Hotel, 215 W-branded apartments offered exclusively as rentals, Class A office space and a rooftop restaurant. The €202 million transaction combines C-PACE financing, senior debt, historic tax credits and local public support. The hotel and residences are due to open in late 2027, with the office floors delivered through 2028.
A historic tower transformed into a mixed-use complex
Erieview Tower, completed in 1964 to designs by Harrison & Abramovitz, rises 161 metres over 40 storeys and around 65,000 sqm. The fifth-tallest tower in Cleveland, it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The building stands at the corner of East Ninth Street and St. Clair Avenue, a key downtown thoroughfare linking the lakefront to the business core.
The redevelopment will comprise 215 W-branded apartments spanning floors 17 to 28 across approximately 16,682 sqm, a 210-key hotel operated under the W Hotels brand, Class A office space from floors 29 to 38, a rooftop restaurant and bar, a 1,394 sqm ballroom, a spa, a fitness centre and an underground car park with more than 450 spaces.
The first W Residences offered exclusively for rent
The 215 apartments, ranging from studios to two-bedroom units, will all offer views of either Lake Erie or downtown. These will be the first W Residences developed anywhere in the world as rental residences rather than for-sale units, marking a shift for a brand that has until now been associated with branded residences sold to owners.
Residents will have access to hotel services — 24-hour concierge, luggage assistance, in-room dining, spa and fitness centre — as well as elevated Marriott Bonvoy status via the group’s proprietary recognition platform, Onvia. This shared-services model spanning hotel, residences and office space reflects an approach already seen in other office-to-hotel conversions, such as Covivio’s scheme at Paris-Raspail.
Class A offices built above a luxury hotel
Floors 29 to 38 offer unobstructed views in all four directions, sitting above a luxury hotel. Office tenants will be able to access the hotel’s fitness centre and spa, have meals delivered from the restaurants to their floors, host board meetings and recruitment dinners in the event spaces, and accommodate visitors within the same building. The spaces will be delivered turnkey, with no fit-out cost to the tenant, with rents set against construction costs already locked in. A leasing team is to be appointed in the fourth quarter.
Our view – The redevelopment of Erieview Tower illustrates a broader trend in the North American market: the repositioning of obsolete office assets into mixed-use hotel-residences-office schemes that pool services and operating costs. This approach, underpinned here by a financing structure combining C-PACE financing, senior debt and historic tax credits, echoes strategies already seen in the European market, notably in office-to-hotel conversions undertaken by institutional property companies.
On the 38th floor, roughly 152 metres above East Ninth Street, a rooftop restaurant and bar — open to the public — will occupy the space once home to Stouffer’s Top of the Town, which operated there for three decades after the tower opened.
A multi-source financing structure
Nuveen Green Capital provided €86.4 million in C-PACE financing, the largest such deal ever closed in Ohio, earmarked for energy-efficiency and building-envelope works. ERIEBANK, a subsidiary of CNB Bank, rounded out the structure with €18.5 million in senior debt. Foss & Company invested in Ohio’s historic and mixed-use development tax credits, while Consortium Structured Investments provided federal historic tax credits, with bridge financing from Midland States Bank. Cuyahoga County provided a loan dedicated to the hotel component, supplemented by funding from Ohio’s brownfield remediation programme and tax exemptions from the City of Cleveland.
Elias Kassouf of ErieView Development said the closing marked a major milestone for Erieview and for downtown Cleveland, adding that the vision had always been to create something that honoured the significance of the landmark while fundamentally rethinking what it could offer the city.
Chris Ellis, Senior Director of Originations at Nuveen Green Capital, highlighted how central the financing structure was to the deal, noting that by maximising accretive, non-recourse C-PACE financing to the maximum amount permitted within an innovative capital structure, alongside historic tax credits and ERIEBANK’s senior debt, the sponsor would be able to avoid future refinancing while securing the asset’s long-term success. Anthony Delfre, Managing Director at BGL Real Estate Advisors, the developer’s exclusive financial advisor, pointed to the deal’s local roots, presenting it as representative of momentum in Cleveland’s multifamily market.
A design team pairing two renowned names
The design has been entrusted to Rockwell Group, the firm behind the very first W Hotel in New York in 1998 as well as the recent W New York – Union Square and W Hollywood, working alongside Beyer Blinder Belle, a firm specialising in heritage restoration whose portfolio includes Grand Central Terminal and the Empire State Building’s lobby. Berardi + Partners is acting as architect of record, alongside Turner & Townsend and Novogradac & Company.
Jon Pinney, Managing Partner at law firm KJK, lead legal counsel on the project, praised the coordination required for a project of this scale, saying that an undertaking of this size demanded exceptional coordination between financing, public and private partners, development, design and construction, and that the closing was the culmination of several years of work by a remarkable team.
A catalyst for the East Ninth Street corridor
Cleveland has not had a luxury-branded hotel since The Ritz-Carlton, Cleveland in 1990. W Cleveland will therefore be the first luxury Marriott-branded hotel to open in the city in 36 years, in an area close to the Huntington Convention Center, Playhouse Square, Public Square, Progressive Field, Huntington Bank Field, Rocket Arena and North Coast Harbor. Nearby, the former Ohio Bell Building reopened in 2025 as 367 apartments following a comparable heritage conversion.
Across all phases, the project is expected to support more than 600 jobs and generate more than €115.6 million in projected revenue for the City of Cleveland over thirty years, through property, income and parking taxes. According to Destination Cleveland, visitors to Cuyahoga County spent €6.38 billion in 2024, up 4% year-on-year — a tourism trend the State of Ohio has cited in describing the project as a catalyst for the corridor.
At a glance by The Hospitality Tribune
ErieView Development closes €202M financing for W Cleveland at Erieview Tower
First W Hotel in Ohio (210 keys) and first W Residences offered exclusively as rentals worldwide (215 units)
1964 landmark tower (40 floors, ~161m) redeveloped into hotel, rental residences, Class A office and Ohio’s highest restaurant/bar
€86.4M C-PACE financing from Nuveen Green Capital, the largest such deal closed in Ohio, plus €18.5M senior debt from ERIEBANK
Design by Rockwell Group (original W New York, 1998) and preservation architect Beyer Blinder Belle
Hotel and residences opening late 2027; office floors delivered through 2028
