Downtown Cleveland is getting a little too quiet for comfort. Instead of fighting to keep a handful of tenants on half-empty floors, some office landlords are opting for a harsher kind of reset: clearing entire buildings and letting them sit dark.
Owners say it is a cold numbers game. A half-full tower still needs heating, cooling, security, and janitorial crews. A fully vacant one can be run on life-support mode and is easier to prep for a sale or a full-blown conversion. The result is a growing chunk of the central business district going dark, and a new reality for anyone trying to make a downtown office portfolio pay for itself. It is also forcing developers, city officials and neighborhood groups to rethink what downtown will actually look like in a few years…