Restaurant dropped from Irishtown Bend plans, forcing change to a costly redevelopment deal 6%
By Mark Naymik7%
8/2/2026, 9:05:00 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 23 faulty reasoning types, including Sunk Cost Effect, Optimism Bias, and Self-Serving Bias, with Unattributed Quote as the most egregious example at 20.1% saturation with 276 hits. Analysis detected 1,267 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,374 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 14.5% and a BS Rank of 6% (28,822 of 30,584 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 94.20% of the article peer group.
Plans to bring a restaurant and large patio to the new Irishtown Bend park in Ohio City have been abandoned because of potential costs and development challenges.
The decision means a 2023 settlement that paved the way for the redevelopment of the hillside above the Cuyahoga River – and took nearly two years and millions of public dollars to reach with developer and restaurateur Tony George and his son, Bobby – has been changed.
The new deal, which is being described as an addendum to the original, will give George two new billboards in Cleveland in lieu of the opportunity to operate a restaurant in the new Irishtown Bend park, which will be managed by the Cleveland Metroparks.
A group of public and private organizations, including the City of Cleveland, the Metroparks and Ohio City Inc. – the nonprofit development corporation helping guide portions of the redevelopment – has been seeking to alter the settlement with Tony George for months.
His property at the corner of West 25th Street and Detroit Avenue, which includes a small building that once had a giant billboard on it, is vital to plans for the 25-acre park.
The original agreement
The original agreement was reached after a legal battle sparked by the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority, which was leading the stabilization project and said it needed George’s property.
The port sought to force George to sell the property to it through eminent domain, which allows governments to take possession of private property for a public purpose.
But after losing key legal rulings, the port and the other entities involved, including Cleveland and the Metroparks, relented and boosted the original offer for the property to get George to sell.
They agreed to pay him $1.25 million and allow him to erect three new billboards elsewhere in the city to replace the giant billboard he was losing.
The agreement also required the partnering entities – other than the port – to build a 3,000-square-foot building and a 17,000-square-foot patio in the future park atop the hillside.
Those would be leased for 10 years to George and his son to run a restaurant.
In exchange, George’s company, Mortgage Investment Group, would relinquish the vacant property so it could be demolished.
That building, once home to the Royal Castle hamburger restaurant, is still standing at the corner, though the giant billboard has been removed.
The building in Ohio City owned by developer Tony George has been a key property to the redevelopment of Irishtown Bend.
But the building and the former billboard atop of it triggered a long legal battle.
Credit: Nick Castele / Signal Cleveland
The revised agreement
A spokesperson for the city said in a statement to Signal Cleveland that “numerous conversations between all parties involved in the original settlement agreement led to the determination that building a restaurant at that location would be extremely challenging.”
The city said that the revised agreement with George grants him two additional billboard spaces – but not on Irishtown Bend.
“While those locations are still being finalized, we can say that billboards at the location of West 25th Street and Detroit Avenue are not under consideration,” the city spokesperson said.
The city acknowledged that negotiating over the George property has been costly to taxpayers.
“This felt like the most sensible economic decision – and most reasonable path of least resistance – given how this has played out over the last several years,” the city’s statement said.
“This was the better option rather than choosing to continue fighting this in court, which would have led to wasting more public dollars as legal fees would’ve kept piling up.”
Tony George told Signal Cleveland that he is satisfied with the outcome and the efforts made toward the restaurant project.
It’s unclear whether the park will ever feature a restaurant, though the city’s statement suggests the vision for the park is evolving.
“The revised agreement also preserves the space as an asset for future opportunities that better align with the community’s long-term vision as the $100m+ public park plans come to fruition,” the statement said.
A view of ongoing construction of the Irishtown Bend stabilization project and park in Ohio City.
Credit: Daniel Lozada for Catchlight Credit: Daniel Lozada for Catchlight
Park project has raised $27 million of its $45 million goal
What final vision for the park remains to be seen.
The city and others estimated that building a hillside park would cost $45 million.
That cost is in addition to $65 million already spent to stabilize the Irishtown Bend slope.
Concerned the slope would someday slide into the river and block shipping, the port led the stabilization project and completed it in February .
Metroparks spokeswoman Jacqueline Lapine told Signal Cleveland in a statement that $27 million has been secured so far for the park and that fundraising is “fluid and dynamic.”
Money for the park is being raised through grants and other sources.
“Cost estimating for the park components is an ongoing process, so the goal could be revised,” Lapine said.
The Metroparks hopes to open the hillside park in 2029.
The nearby Cleveland Foundation Centennial Lake Link Trail along the bank of the Cuyahoga River is under construction and slated to open in 2027.
Restaurant plans for hillside park never detailed
Building a restaurant and deck on Irishtown Bend – which backers claimed in 2021 was too unstable to even support George’s existing building – appears to have proven more costly and complicated than anticipated.
Though the original agreement with George promised to specifically build a 3,000-square-foot building and 17,000-square-foot patio, no estimates for construction – or a cap on costs – were ever established.
Recent discussions among the parties suggest erecting a building nonetheless exceeded expectations, with some ballpark estimates at $8 million or more, according to people familiar with the discussions.
The original settlement required George and the other partners to try to “agree upon the design and construction of a restaurant through a future project development agreement,” Lapine said.
That project agreement, which would have established estimated costs and other development terms, was never ultimately drafted, and a design of the restaurant was “never commenced by Cleveland Metroparks,” Lapine said.
“As a result, no restaurant cost estimates were ever finalized,” she said.
The Metroparks said that under the proposed addendum, “it is our understanding that all parties are satisfied with the revised path forward.”
Public entities spent millions trying to force George to sell
In 2021, the port began laying the groundwork to force the sale of George’s property through eminent domain.
That year, George preemptively sued the port in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court to stymie its efforts.
Later, after George rejected the port’s first formal offer of $360,000 for the property, the port tried to force the sale by suing George in Cuyahoga County Probate Court, which handles eminent domain cases.
George said at the time that the port didn’t fairly value the property, its future redevelopment opportunities and the income-generating billboard.
The port’s insistence that George take its offer triggered the expensive legal battle that cost the port, Cleveland and the Metroparks millions of dollars, not including the cost of the settlement.
An early calculation by Signal Cleveland put the legal fees paid by taxpayer-backed agencies at $1.6 million, though final tallies pushed the total higher.
Ultimately, the port and other partners agreed to pay George much more than the port’s first offer and include compensation for the loss of the giant billboard, the largest in the city at the time.
In recent months, Ohio City Inc. has played a key role in reaching a new agreement with George.
Its executive director, Jane Platten, said in a statement to Signal Cleveland that the organization remains committed to creating a “world class level project for Greater Cleveland and the Ohio City neighborhood.”
“Raising funds and raising awareness of the significant regional impact are critical to completing this historic 25-acre green space,” Platten said.
“We won’t stop until we cut the ribbon on opening day.”
The post Restaurant dropped from Irishtown Bend plans, forcing change to a costly redevelopment deal appeared first on Signal Cleveland .
Speakers
6speakers33%attributed speech917writer words
Selected voice
100%flagged-word coverageCity of Cleveland
185 attributed words40% of attributed speech39% writer coverage
Attribution is sentence-level. Pattern percentages are calculated only from words assigned to that voice.
Loading…
Loading…
Loading…
Loading…
Analysis
Hover over highlighted words in the article to view the associated bias or fallacy analysis.