Cleveland, OH

Ohio City Inc., Placing Bet on Local Retail, Buys City Goods

Published

2 years ago

February 28, 2024

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Ohio City Inc., Placing Bet on Local Retail, Buys City Goods

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Mark Oprea

Liz Painter and Sam Friedman, co-founders of City Goods in Ohio City’s Hingetown. The duo sold their retail cluster complex to Ohio City Inc., in a bid to keep it going as a boon to the community.

The seven U-shaped, silver hangers at 1442 West 28th Street aren’t going anywhere, but they are changing hands.

This week, Ohio City Inc. finalized a deal to purchase City Goods, the cluster of 30 small businesses selling everything from organic skincare products to hanging plants and vinyl records.

The move, eighteen months after co-founders Sam Friedman and Liz Painter opened shop, follows the duo’s decision to convert City Goods into a nonprofit, believing the model would keep the operation more financially healthy.

A sale to OCI, Friedman said on Tuesday, furthers City Good’s permanency in a growing neighborhood endlessly begging for stores selling home goods without Big Box affiliation.

“We need money. That’s the simple fact of the matter,” Friedman said.

It’s why, he and Painter began conversations with Chris Schmitt, OCI’s executive director, the day after Christmas, as a path to nonprofit status began to look ideal: to ensure that City Good could, unlike most retail clusters, keep its ease-of-entry philosophy intact.

“What [the sale] does is keep City Goods going strong in the future in ways I couldn’t guarantee,” Friedman, also the owner of Chagrin Valley Soap and Salve, said. “It moves it into the public square in the way that we were attempting to do anyway.”

In 2022, after reading a Scene article highlighting entrepreneur Graham Veysey’s build of seven silver “pod” structures near Church + State, Friedman’s interest piqued. After a decade in retail, he felt the need to start a small business cluster with a model that favored new talent. Everything besides one’s rent—marketing, taxes, signage, maintenance, workers comp—is handled by City Goods management.

The only problem, for Painter and Friedman, is that model didn’t prove to be wholly sustainable: City Goods as an entity did not turn a profit. As a financial backstop, Friedman opened Hangar, an upscale cocktail and amaro bar that would ideally earn enough to allow other tenants affordable operational costs. Or, as Friedman, who also bartended once a week at Hangar, put it: “We’re having espresso martinis with you to support makers.”

Schmitt was, of course, one of those patrons.

click to enlarge

Mark Oprea

OCI interim director Chris Schmitt, at Lekko Coffee on Detroit Avenue, on Tuesday.

After taking over for former OCI director Tom McNair in October, Schmitt quickly realized that Ohio City’s ground-floor retail, its contemporary breakfast mainstays and variety stores, was paramount to keeping the neighborhood on a healthy trajectory.

McNair had helped decrease retail vacancies from 40 percent in 2014 to a laudable five percent in 2019, and observed as three years of the pandemic threatened the health of occupied storefronts. Absorbing City Goods into one of OCI’s “seven subsidiaries,” Schmitt told Scene, was key in keeping the bespoke goods—home goods, especially—Ohio City could maintain.

“This is a long term investment,” Schmitt told Scene, from a table at Lekko Coffee on Detroit Avenue. (Schmitt and Friedman declined to talk purchase price.) “A long-range investment by us, to create the brands of tomorrow. They’re going to fill the vacant storefronts.”

“Brands,” Painter said, sitting next to Schmitt, “that have that goal to shift and move to their own space eventually.”

As for the brands, for ilthy or Brittany’s Record Shop, Friedman said that “almost all” of City Goods’ vendors are renewing their leases this year, while others look to bigger spaces or will disband altogether.

Ohio City Inc.’s accumulation of those seven arched domes comes at a time when the City of Cleveland investigates whether or not to close a sliver of West 29th Street, a block away, to car traffic. Though OCI is so far neutral on the issue (Schmitt wants to “wait until a study comes out”), Friedman believes that City Goods’ location on the eastern fringe of Hingetown will keep it as a destination for years to come.

“Walkability is why City Goods is where it is,” he said. “Because small business retail, the one thing it requires—Requires with a capital R—is walking traffic.”

Friedman and Painter will stay involved with City Goods in some form: Friedman as an advisor to OCI, Painter as brand manager and an OCI marketing director. As for regulars scoring a Friedman-made cocktail on Friday night’s at Hangar, the co-founder is most likely out as its Sam Malone.

“Hey, every night I banged the glass, I yelled about the shops, I talked to every single person who comes in about why we’re here,” Friedman said. “But breaking news: Sam doesn’t like breaking his back.”

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Cleveland, OH

Man shot on Cleveland’s West Side

Published

6 hours ago

June 3, 2026

Press Room

CLEVELAND, Ohio (WOIO) – A man was shot in Cleveland’s Cudell neighborhood Tuesday night.

Cleveland Police 1st District officers responded to the 10100 block of Madison Ave around 9:00 P.M.

A man approximately 45 years of age was found with a gunshot wound.

EMS took the victim to MetroHealth Hospital. This incident remains under investigation.

There is no information on any suspects or arrests.

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Cleveland, OH

Leaders in Washington and Cleveland take aim at affordable housing in Northeast Ohio

Published

16 hours ago

June 2, 2026

Press Room

Leaders in Washington and Cleveland take aim at affordable housing in Northeast Ohio

CLEVELAND — Ahead of her Third Annual Housing Expo this Saturday at Tri-C Corporate College East, Rep. Shontel Brown (D-OH) rolled out her Safe and Affordable Housing Agenda on Tuesday. It’s a series of four bills aimed at lowering home costs while strengthening lead paint and pipe abatement.

“We wanted to bring something forward that would improve the living conditions, to make things more affordable and more accessible for not only the constituents of Ohio’s 11th Congressional District but those who are experiencing the same challenge across the country,” Brown told News 5.

The Housing Supply Fund Act is legislation that encourages the building of more affordable housing by filling financing gaps that are holding back construction. The legislation would establish a competitive program within the Treasury’s Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI) Fund to address financing gaps that prevent otherwise viable housing projects from moving forward.

“We want to make sure we do not give up on affordable housing; we want to make sure that it is more accessible,” Brown said.

There is also the Affordable Housing Preservation and Protection Act, which is legislation to maintain and preserve existing HUD-assisted housing. This legislation establishes a new HUD preservation authority to provide targeted financing and intervention tools for distressed HUD-assisted multifamily properties at risk of deterioration, foreclosure, or loss of affordability.

The bill is designed to help preserve affordable housing, facilitate responsible ownership transitions, and protect existing federal housing investments serving seniors, working families, and vulnerable residents.

The other two bills introduced deal with the issue of lead abatement. The GET THE LEAD OUT Act of 2026 would create a new federal grant program to replace lead pipes, fixtures, and taps. The legislation would create a broad federal framework to address lead in drinking water and housing by funding removal of lead-based pipe and tap hazards, establishing training and certification requirements, directing federal standards and state programs, and integrating lead plumbing remediation into major housing programs. Brown’s legislation creates new authorities and financing mechanisms to drive national action on residential lead plumbing hazards.

The Removing Existing Pipes with Lead and Advancing Clean Environments (or REPLACE) Act improves existing lead paint and lead pipe removal programs within the federal government. This legislation would amend existing HUD and Safe Drinking Water Act authorities to strengthen lead-paint hazard remediation in housing, improve local implementation capacity, and better coordinate paint and pipe removal efforts.

“We know that this has been a longstanding issue in the City of Cleveland,” she said. “What we’re doing is trying to supplement and amplify the opportunities to be able to address these issues that have long-standing impacts in our community.”

Brown’s announcement comes on the heels of the Bibb administration’s announcement of the creation of the Housing Innovation District, a 1,500-acre swath of land covering St. Clair, Superior and Hough where efforts will begin this summer to repopulate streets that have lost more than half of their homes in recent decades with new housing starting on East 67th south of St. Clair, where ten homes will go up later this year.

A recent New York Times piece cited that among the barriers to building more housing are restrictive zoning and permitting, something the city addresses in this district.

“One of the big things that we’re doing is eliminating permit fees for single-family home construction, which is again a real sort of barrier to this sort of work,” said Tom McNair, Mayor Justin Bibb’s Chief of Integrated Development.

They also established what they call a “Pattern Book,” where they’ve pre-approved designs for certain types of homes in this district to speed up the process.

“When there’s a vacant lot that the city owns, it will be like this is the home you want, this is the lot you want to build on, here’s your permit,” he said.

Congresswoman Brown sees their efforts helping citizens towards the same goal.

“Our legislation would dovetail perfectly into what the mayor is putting forth as well,” she said. “People are doing all of the right things, they’re working hard, but they’re still having trouble getting ahead, and we want to be able to again address that gap as it relates to the opportunity to build wealth in our community, and this legislation will certainly help put people on a pathway to do that.”

Part of that pathway includes Brown’s Housing Expo for constituents of the 11th Congressional District. “It’s a one-stop shop for everything housing, so whether you are a renter or whether you are a first-time home buyer, whether you are looking to renovate, whether you are a senior that’s aging in place. We wanted to bring every aspect of the housing industry under one umbrella, and so we will do that.”

Constituents can register for the free event here.

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