Cleveland Is Turning Dead Department Stores Into Apartments. Other Cities Are Watching

The American shopping mall is dying. But in Cleveland, dead stores are getting new life - as places to live. Cleveland has quietly become one of the most active cities in the country for turning empty buildings into housing. The industry calls it "adaptive reuse." It's exactly what it sounds like. Take a building that no one uses anymore. Turn it into apartments. Cleveland ranks 8th in the nation for this kind of work. It's ahead of San Francisco, Dallas, and D.C. More than 5,300 rental units have come out of 36 old buildings. Twenty of those projects went up in just the last ten years.

The Big One: Belle Oaks

The largest project right now is Belle Oaks Marketplace. It sits on 71 acres in Richmond Heights, just outside the city. The site used to be the Richmond Town Square Mall. The old Macy's and Sears stores have been torn down. In their place, builders are putting up a $450 million campus. It will have close to 800 luxury apartment units, 40,000 square feet of dining, and a new Meijer grocery store. The first building opens in October 2026. A second one follows in March 2027. Why the site works: Mall lots come with roads, parking, and utility lines already in place. That cuts the cost of building. It also speeds up the timeline. You don't need to dig new sewer lines when the old ones are still there.

Not Just Malls

The trend goes past big-box retail. The Warner & Swasey building is an old factory that sat empty for more than 40 years. It's now being turned into 112 units of low-cost housing with a $55 million upgrade. The May Company building - a department store built in 1915 - has already been turned into upscale apartments. What makes Cleveland different: The city has a mix of public cash and private money that keeps these projects going. Federal tax breaks, state grants, and investor dollars are all flowing into the same deals at the same time. That's not easy to pull off. Most cities struggle to line up all three.

A National Trend

Cleveland isn't alone in this. Across the country, 54% of mall projects now include some kind of housing. One-third of old anchor store spaces - most often former Sears stores - are being rebuilt as apartments. The math is simple. America has too few homes and too many empty stores. Builders who can fix both problems at once are finding eager investors, helpful city halls, and renters ready to sign leases. In plain terms: There are millions of square feet of dead retail space in the U.S. and millions of people who need a place to live. This trend turns one into the other.

What to Watch

The first Belle Oaks apartments hit the market in October. If they fill up fast at luxury rents, more cities will push to do the same thing. Cleveland could end up as the model for what happens to dead malls everywhere.

Why Investors Should Watch This Space

Mall-to-housing plays are a growing niche in real estate. Firms that buy dead malls cheap and turn them into housing can earn strong returns because the land and structures cost less than building from scratch. If you invest in REITs or real estate funds, this is a trend to track. The firms doing this work are still small. But the deal sizes are getting bigger. Belle Oaks at $450 million is proof of that.