Found: One Cleveland Apartment

We saw about a dozen different buildings and complexes over the weekend from a list mainly generated from Internet searches, and, at the end of the day, the apartment we found was in a building that wasn’t on our list. We had some time Monday morning, and more or less knocked on a leasing office door when we walked past a “luxury lofts available” banner.


The apartment is one of the smaller lofts in the Cloak Factory. Here’s the floor plan of the place. You can go to this page to get the clickable links so as to see the publicity shots of the place. The big living space is nice — exposed brick, hardwood floors — and the kitchen is pretty big. One of the neat things is the old freight elevator shaft to the right that can be used as an office. Note that the floor plan cuts off the entrance vestibule towards the bottom right. The rent is ridiculously cheap for that much space, at least from our point of view; Grace’s Brooklyn studio didn’t cost that much less.

The main drawback is that there’s no good view — the windows face out at another old warehouse or at the top deck of a parking garage (which will have construction going on during the day later this year, for about a year and a half). A smaller apartment in the adjacent building with a Lake and Browns Stadium view was only $100 less per month. But there is plenty of sunlight, since the adjacent buildings aren’t that tall, and there are a lot of windows. The aforementioned parking garage is also accessible to us without having to go outside. A spot is $75/month.

Interestingly, the guys who renovated this warehouse are supposed to have come from New York City and have built it with New York sensibilities in mind. Every other place we saw had horrible floorplans, where 1200-square-foot apartments lost large amounts of useable space to hallways, and where all the floors had icky wall-to-wall carpeting. The leasing agent at another building (who looked vaguely like Agent Smith from the Matrix) asked whether we were looking at “finished” or “unfinished” apartments after we mentioned we had seen the Cloak Factory and the Bradley Building. “Finished” apparently means plaster and carpet in Cleveland’s real estate lexicon.

Note that this wasn’t the largest available apartment we saw. The agent for the Cloak Factory first showed us a 3000+ square foot duplex with roof deck access in the Bradley (same management), with the main living space dominated by a floating staircase (the place looked somewhat like Petrovsky’s apartment from Sex and the City). The rent was around $2500. I think it was some sort of test, to see if we weren’t a couple of apartment tourists looking at places above our means. The rent figure he gave got a shrug from me, though. Ultimately, it was too much apartment: how would we keep it clean, and wouldn’t it feel empty even after we’re fully moved in? For the place we settled on, we’re still going to need to buy some furniture, if only to put a few chairs and a small table around the gas fireplace in the middle of the living room.

There’s, of course, a bunch of ancillary tasks, like setting up cable and Internet access (Adelphia), gas (CCF’s guide says Dominion East Ohio), electricity (The Illuminating Company?), telephone (probably Vonage if we can get away with it), and, of course, moving. We have a few callbacks for moving company quotes, so this should be taken care of in a few days.

The next main task, probably to be tackled after I get there later this summer, is to find a job. Careerboard.com is an Ohio-specific jobs board which I found through the Cleveland.com forum for young professionals. A quick look at the “IT – Administration” category shows this posting, which suspiciously like what I do now, especially with the “familiarity with” section. My Windows administration skills are a bit iffy, though. There’s also the usual suspects, such as Monster.com. Dice.com (where I still have some 401(k) money that needs to be transfered) doesn’t have a Cleveland listing.

Update: Apparently, one can use a keyword search on Dice for “Cleveland, OH” to get a listing outside the pre-defined Metro areas. There’s also ComputerWork.com.

2 Responses to “Found: One Cleveland Apartment”

  1. Brendon Chiou Says:

    Hello,

    I found your website randomly when I placed a search for “lofts Sacramento, CA” on Yahoo. I’m moving from Boston to Sacramento in Mid-late-June and have yet to find an apartment. I will be signing a lease sight unseen as I will not have chance to visit the area before my program (residency @ the northern VA hospitals) begins, July 1st. Anyway, I was wondering if you might know of any very nice downtown apartments. I prefer lofts (I’ve seen the East End and Capital Lofts on the Web; Too expensive.) but any high places will do. I can afford up to $1350/month. I apologize for bothering you but I’ve searched high and low with absolutely no luck and few leads. The only places I’ve found are places located on rent.com…etc. I imagine that some of the cooler places (urban style, loft, above retail, non- cookiecutter gated community) are not listed so I thought I’d see if someone more familiar to Sacramento might have some suggestions. Either way, good luck with your move to Cleveland and I thank you for your time.

  2. Brendon Chiou Says:

    Sorry, did’nt mean “high places” meant to say “high end places”.