At The Site Readiness for Good Jobs Fund, we're not just creating jobs; we're revitalizing Cleveland's neighborhoods, reducing blight, promoting sustainability, and empowering residents to build lasting wealth. Our unique financing model ensures that prosperity stays right where it's needed most.
We mourn the passing of our friend and board member, Gus Frangos. Our hearts go out to his family, friends and his colleagues at the Cuyahoga Land Bank. The Site Readiness Fund’s work would not have been possible but for the efforts of Gus over multiple decades to create the modern land bank movement. Moreover, he showed great flexibility and collaboration in the creation and startup of our organization. He was a caring and principled leader, and he will be greatly missed by many.
Mayor Justin Bibb campaigned for office with an expectation of promoting economic recovery, not just from the Covid pandemic, but from decades of disinvestment. He also promised to modernize government services and bring growth to the neighborhoods of Cleveland.
At The Site Readiness Fund, our mission is to catalyze sustainable economic revitalization in Cleveland by reactivating disinvested properties, creating job opportunities, and fostering community prosperity.
We envision a vibrant Cleveland, where our efforts to reactivate 1000 acres of disinvested property result in the creation of 25,000 good jobs, transforming vacant land into job-ready sites and contributing to a resilient, job-rich Cleveland for generations to come.
The Site Readiness Fund performs several tasks to bring high potential, but disinvested sites to market.
The Site Readiness Fund has an extensive inventory of potential sites. We have a systematic due diligence process to assess the potential of sites from a market attractiveness, neighborhood benefit, and financial viability perspective.
We create sites that are a minimum of 10 acres, but ideally 30-100 acres. This almost always means aggregating multiple parcels. Sometimes this means taking possession of abandoned parcels that are in a land bank or in forfeiture, but it can also involve land donations and land purchases. The Cuyahoga County Land Bank is a powerful partner as they bring expertise, tools and legal standing that expedites and lowers the costs of our work.
Most sites where we work have some level of historic environmental contamination and they often need additional infrastructure improvement. We work actively with all levels of government including the federal governments’ US EPA and US EDA, the State of Ohio’s JobsOhio and Department of Development, Cuyahoga County and many others to remediate and otherwise improve properties. One of the great benefits of our work is removing industrial eyesores from our neighborhoods.
A core value is having jobs that benefit the neighborhoods in which they sit and attracting companies that are good neighbors. To that end, we engage with the surrounding residents (as well as their Council representatives and Community Development Corporations) to understand what being a good neighbor means in that specific context.
Our work is not finished until there is a productive use of the property. Sometimes this will mean bringing our now market-ready site forward via a request for proposal process to developers. At other times we will be responding to inquiries from JobsOhio, Team NEO, and other business development entities. In collaboration with the city, county, and business organizations, we identify growing Cleveland companies and create locations that meet their future needs. Typically, we do not do vertical development but have the flexibility to pursue a range of possibilities to meet a variety of company needs.
Given the complexity of aggregating and cleaning up disinvested sites, we utilize a multitude of financing tools. At the foundation is the subsidy capital provided by the Site Readiness Fund itself along with other philanthropic entities that see the long-term value of our vision. The financial model simply would not work without this. We utilize state and federal grants to clean up properties as well as a variety of loan and equity instruments that offer return to impact investors. We can also facilitate a variety of tax-advantaged instruments to help individuals and companies who wish to donate properties.
Most of the Site Readiness Fund’s work occurs through our partners and outside professionals. That work is guided by its two full-time staff.
The Site Readiness Fund is governed by a nine-person board of directors jointly appointed by the Mayor of Cleveland and the Cleveland City Council President. Collectively, they bring national expertise and deep local knowledge. They are joined by three nonvoting representatives from Cuyahoga County, Team NEO, and the Cuyahoga Land Bank.
Site Readiness for Good Jobs Fund
812 Huron Avenue, Suite 712
Cleveland, Ohio 44115
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