SHAKER HEIGHTS, Ohio – This architecturally distinguished East Side suburb may look as if it’s completely built out, with no room left for new homes.
But that’s not the case. To underscore the fact and draw attention to the community’s willingness to entertain styles never contemplated by the Van Sweringen brothers, who founded the community in the early 20th century, the city sponsored a design competition for new homes on three open lots.
Winners will receive cash prizes at a free public awards ceremony on Friday from 6 to 8 p.m. at The Dealership, 3558 Lee Road.
The competition challenged architect-builder teams to design innovative, energy-efficient, middle-income housing for three specific lots in the southern Moreland neighborhood.
The neighborhood was hit hard by the 2008-09 recession and the mortgage foreclosure crisis. Using federal, state and county grants, the city cleared 50-plus vacant lots at a cost of $10,000 to $15,000 apiece, said Kamla Lewis, director of Neighborhood Revitalization.
In all, 85 lots are available in the neighborhood, where the city also established a tax-abated reinvestment area and innovation zone.
The competition attracted a dozen entries from the United States and Britain, which were ranked last month by a design jury that included Jennifer Coleman, senior program officer for the arts at the George Gund Foundation; urban finance expert Marc Norman of Syracuse, New York; Philadelphia architect Brian Phillips; and Terry Schwarz, director of Kent State University’s Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative.
Prizes and winners are:
– 1st Prize, $5,000, to Donnelly Eber Architects of New York and Simcon Homes of Cleveland.
– 2nd Prize, $3,000, to Decent Goodfellow Architects LTD of London, U.K., and Blossom Homes LLC of Cleveland.
– 3rd Prize, of $1,000, to Moreland Collaborative — a team comprising builder and Shaker Heights resident Michael Peters; architects Matthew Wolf, Irwin Lowenstein and Christopher Maurer; designer Kenneth Hejduk; Case Western Reserve University Strategic Innovation Lab Co-Directors Patrick Doherty and Mark “Puck” Mykleby; and marketing professional Sara Gilbertson.
The winners are qualified to enter into development and use agreements for construction in in Shaker Heights, and the city considers the winning designs as concepts that will inform the final housing product, the city said in a press release.
The statement, posted on the city’s website, quotes Mayor Earl M. Leiken as saying that “the submissions demonstrated the feasibility for energy-efficient, flexible housing.
“We look forward to incorporating these progressive designs into the Moreland neighborhood.”
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