Cleveland Institute of Art professor Doug Paige is showing students how to take a page out of Mother Nature's playbook when it comes to industrial design.

After initial reluctance to becoming director of sales and marketing at the Hilton Cleveland Downtown, Ronnie Collins now sees what the city has to offer and has become a vocal advocate for all things 216.

A group of buildings built in the late 1800s on Church Avenue between W. 25^th and W. 28^th Streets in Ohio City were once the hallmark of a manufacturing town – housing everything from the original Baehr Brewing Company and Odd Fellows Masonic Hall to a machine shop and a tin and sheet metal shop, among other business and residential dwellings. 

Exhibit Builders last owned and operated the buildings fronting W. 25th Street. More recently, the heavy industrial buildings housed the Phoenix Ice Machine Company, Lester Engineering Company, then a charter school and the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority.
 
Today development partners Rick Foran of Foran Group and Chris Smythe of Smythe Property Advisors are converting the structures into contemporary apartment lofts with a nod to their unique history. “You know you’re in historic buildings, but with modern amenities,” says Smythe.
 
The project has been nine years in the making. Smythe and Foran bought their first property in the group from CMHA back in 2008 with a bank loan. Then the real estate market tanked.

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