With the ‘Midline,’ Cleveland Plots an Industrial Comeback
Long-vacant factories and polluted former manufacturing sites on the city’s East Side are the focus of a redevelopment initiative that aims to lure new companies.
Abandoned industrial sites line the freight rail tracks running through Cleveland’s East Side. A new city initiative aims to get this strip of land ready for new tenants.
Photographer: Thomas WasinskiBrad Whitehead was driving through Cleveland’s Fairfax neighborhood recently when he stopped beside the graffiti-scarred former factory of Wellman-Seaver Engineering, a company that once made steel mill equipment. Like many buildings from the city’s manufacturing heyday, the massive 180,000-square-foot hulk had been vacant for decades.
Whitehead manages the city fund that bought it, plus the 10 acres of overgrown land it sits on, in 2024.