Sheila Wright and Angela Thi Bennett were tempted to bask in their success – just for a moment. 

It was back in January, and tenants had started moving into Gordon Crossing, The mixed-income apartment building on East 101st Street was the first major project for the owners of Cleveland-based Frontline Development Group, LLC. They are co-owners and limited partners. As Black real estate developers and women, they are a rarity — so they had extra reason to celebrate.

Then they started to hear the stories of tenants who were extremely grateful to find affordable housing near University Circle, where rents are skyrocketing. And they thought about the boost the project had given to contractors who are also underrepresented in the business.    

“We realized it wasn’t just about us,” Wright said.

“We’re in real estate development, but it is also about people development,” said Bennett.

These are our people. We’re going to make sure that they’re able to economically participate in this development.”

Angela Thi Bennett of Frontline Development Group on why it is important for her firm to include minority contractors and workers on their projects.

Wright is Frontline’s president, and Bennett serves as vice president and general counsel. The women say gender and race have shaped how they view their roles. So have their life experiences growing up in working-class neighborhoods on Cleveland’s East Side and East Cleveland. Through grit, hard work and the encouragement and support of others, both were able to evolve from struggling teen moms to later earn MBAs and law degrees.

With each Frontline project, Bennett and Wright said, they want to create opportunities for those who are often underrepresented in construction and development. This includes introducing young people, often from neighborhoods such as the ones in which they grew up, to construction careers through internships or jobs. They work on finding ways to help Black and other minority-owned businesses get contracts on larger construction projects. 

Frontline launched in 2018. It is scheduled to start another major project this summer and a third, smaller project soon. To get to this point, it took persistence to mount barriers, such as securing funding, that female- and Black-owned businesses have long faced. Only 0.40% of real estate developers in the United States are Black, according to a report by the Grove Collective Foundation. Far fewer are women. 

Demand for their first project near the University Circle/ Hough border has been high. More than 1,300 people have tried to get apartments at the 54-unit Gordon Crossing. Frontline is scheduled to close in July on the Gateway 66, an 80-unit mixed-income apartment complex next to historic League Park in Hough. Construction on the buildings at the intersection of East 66th Street and Linwood Avenue should begin in August, Wright said. 

Both projects are being done with Woda Cooper Cos., which specializes in affordable housing. The Columbus-based company is the majority owner, co-developer, builder and operator at Gordon Crossing. At Gateway 66, Frontline will be the majority owner, she said.

Frontline will also break ground as early as this spring on building about 15 single-family homes in Hough, Wright said. Both the single-family homes and the $27.5 million Gateway 66 will be part of Allen Estates, a five-acre development.

Building where disinvestment left opportunity 

It is significant that Black-owned Frontline is emerging as a developer in Cleveland, Wright said. For decades, most Cleveland neighborhoods saw little residential construction. Then in the 1990s, single-family and some multi-family housing started rising on lots – many that had been vacant for a quarter century or more. It was a time of a booming national economy and much funding and other housing incentives from Washington, D.C., that encouraged residential construction.

While construction occurred in mostly Black East Side neighborhoods, such as Central, Hough and Fairfax, which had suffered disinvestment for years, Black developers were a rarity. 

With the desire for urban living increasing, Frontline is banking on areas such as Hough, Glenville, Fairfax and East Cleveland as being ripe for development. While many suburbs are built up and residents in the exurbs are increasingly pushing back on further development, land in city neighborhoods and East Cleveland is available. 

“We don’t have a lot of land left in Cuyahoga County to do any large-scale transformational development,” Wright said. “The only places left to invest are places that suffered disinvestment.”

Frontline is part of a trend of Black developers with projects in Cleveland, said William Willis, senior director of development services at Cleveland Development Advisors, whose focus includes being a lender to and investor in local real estate projects.

Such projects include 89th Rising, a housing complex in Fairfax done by Tim Tramble’s We Rise Development LLC. African Town Plaza is a project that is redeveloping the former Cedar Branch YMCA on Cedar Avenue and East 75th Street in Fairfax into commercial and residential space. The project is being done by James Sosan. Ninety-Four Ten is a 116-unit apartment building at 9410 Hough Ave. that was redeveloped after having been vacant about a decade. The developer is Gina Merritt of Northern Real Estate Urban Ventures, LLC.

“From a minority perspective, there are more real estate developers in the last five years that are actually carrying out projects, meaning that they close on their financing to get them to that point where they are actually able to really get projects complete,” he said.

How Frontline was able to help minority contractors and young people interested in construction

The $17 million Gordon Crossing project came at a good time. Frontline’s market-rate homes project in Hough was then coming together more slowly than anticipated, but things have since fallen in place. 

The mixed-income affordable apartment building was a major opportunity to test Bennett’s and Wright’s people development philosophy, especially as it relates to including Black and other minority contractors on the job.

“These are our people,” Bennett said. “We’re going to make sure that they’re able to economically participate in this development.”

But a major barrier stood to block their desire to have Black contractors and subcontractors participate on the project. Many lacked the financial capital to qualify to bid on commercial projects. The reasons ranged from not having the expensive equipment needed to perform work on commercial projects to being unable to afford the costly insurance often required to bid on such projects. 

Early on, Frontline struggled to get underrepresented groups on the project. And it was more than a matter of fulfilling the personal goals of these two developers. Because Gordon Crossing received $600,000 from the City of Cleveland Housing Trust Fund, it was subject to a Community Benefits Agreement. Requirements included participating in a mentor-protege program aimed at increasing minority- and women-owned contractors on commercial projects, having an internship program for Cleveland residents and hiring Cleveland residents.

Partnerships were key to meeting the goals, Bennett said. Frontline worked with the Greater Cleveland Partnership’s Built Strong program, whose focus includes building the capacity of minority- and women-owned construction businesses so that they can bid on commercial contracts. They found young construction workers through the Cleveland Freedom Project, a youth-led nonprofit that runs a job placement program that helps developers meet CBA hiring goals.

“Why reinvent the wheel?” Bennett said.

The Mayor’s Office of Equal Opportunity, which oversees the community agreements, provided technical assistance and guidance, Bennett and Wright said. Frontline often met every other week with Director Tyson Mitchell or his staff, ensuring that goals were achieved, Wright said.

“They held us accountable, but they were extremely supportive,” she said.

And because of all of these efforts, the project produced success stories.

Working with Frontline was ‘life-changing’

When Frontline became part of the Gordon Crossing project, Bennett and Wright started thinking about Black and other underrepresented contractors and subcontractors who could work on the project. Wayne’s World Plumbing & Sewer, Inc. immediately came to mind. Both knew the owners and said the business performed quality work. 

Chief Executive Officer Dwane Claggett had developed an expertise in the field when he worked on commercial sewers during more than two decades as a supervisor in a municipal sewer department. In 2020, he started the business with his wife, Samatha Claggett, who is chief operating officer and chief financial officer. She said the company was doing well with its many residential clients, but she and her husband wanted to secure contracts on development projects. They kept trying to, but were beginning to conclude that it was an insiders’ game – and they didn’t know how to break through.

“Especially for minorities, these are things and opportunities that you’re never going to be able to Google and find out about,” Samatha Claggett said. “No one is ever going to outwardly publicize it, so that we can participate and get a seat at the table.”

Being in the mentor-protege program on the project changed all of this. It included Frontline connecting the Claggetts to Built Strong, which helped them access grants, financing, training and other things essential to scaling their business. For example, companies needed a specific Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) certification to work on the Gordon Crossing project, but none was available locally. Bennett didn’t fret. She worked with Built Strong to get the training offered.

Now, with all of the support, the company owns a piece of machinery, costing nearly $100,000, needed to work on commercial sewers. The mentorship helped the business land several commercial contracts, qualify to submit bids for contracts with a public agency and attract investors, she said. The company will also work on the Gateway 66 project.

“It has been life-changing,” she said, adding that she and her husband have found the mentorship invaluable.

“It’s really nice to be able to call Sheila or Angela and to bounce things off of them because they are more experienced about development projects [than we are],” Samantha Claggett said. “It’s really important because it helps improve us as a company, and we’re still learning.”

Creating a new development model

The racial wealth gap plays prominently into why there aren’t more Black developers in Northeast Ohio. You usually have to have a lot of money to be a developer or relationships with financial institutions and investors willing to back your projects.

“The developer takes on all the risk,” Wright said. “They put all the money up, and they don’t get paid until the deal closes. There is a reason why you don’t see a lot of women and folks who don’t historically come from that kind of money in development. It is a cash-upfront-heavy industry.”

A lot goes into being able to access capital, said Willis of Cleveland Development Advisors (CDA). Factors include understanding the process to get it, such as the prerequisites required to make it through the underwriting process. Developers must have a feasible project and show that their company has the ability to support it. CDA continues to develop mentoring, technical assistance and other programs that make it easier for minority and other developers to mount what could be obstacles.

The access issue is further complicated by uncontrollable factors such as unforeseen site problems and adverse economic conditions. Then there is the  fact that development projects often take a few years from concept to completion.

“Typically, when you’re an emerging developer, you won’t see a return on your investment in that development project for some time,” said Yvette Ittu, CDA’s president and chief executive officer. “So, you’re also likely to have another job, or have some way of bringing income in.”

Both Frontline owners work other jobs – Wright in philanthropy and Bennett in digital equity. 

Even though Wright and Bennett fall into the “folks who don’t historically come from money category,” they were determined to become developers. They didn’t have financial capital, but they had social capital.They knew a lot of people in government and the private sector, having been involved in local civic life and community affairs for years. Wright served as executive director of the Cleveland NAACP,  has worked at Cleveland Housing Court and served on the boards of local nonprofits.

Frontline also brings development experience. Bennett is the former director of community development and building and housing in East Cleveland and led redevelopment projects with another business before Frontline. She also is a former member of the State Board of Education of Ohio.

Since Frontline was presenting a new model, they often had to convince potential development partners of its worth.

“We learned early on how to have them clearly value our contribution to a deal, which includes political capital, being able to structure things in your favor to leverage your position in the deal,” Wright said. 

In forming partnerships, Frontline was always clear about wanting ownership and an active role in a project, Bennett said.

“Oftentimes, when you see these joint ventures with women and minorities, they’re in name only,”  she said. “They expect you to put your name on the project, stay silent, leave all the decision making to them, and then you show up at the close of the deal, take your check and walk away.” 

Leveraging social capital played a major role in Frontline meeting CBA goals on Gordon Crossing, Bennett and Wright said. It helped them to raise $9 million in public and private funding for Gateway 66 before partnering with Woda Cooper, they said.

This included a $3 million investment from University Hospitals for the Gateway 66 project. Wright said she lobbied UH for two years for the loan, which will be at a below-market interest rate. In an email to Signal Cleveland, the medical institution said it is “proud” to support the project because of “a greater understanding of, and appreciation for, how things like stable housing, access to nutritious food, and other factors impact people’s overall health.” 

The women pride themselves in creating affordable housing with Gordon Crossing and Gateway 66 at a time when many city and county officials say the demand for affordable housing outstrips the demand. For example, Gateway 66, with its one- and two-bedroom apartments, will have many units targeting working-class and middle-class renters. These include two-person families making between $39,800 and $63,680.

Frontline’s commitment to both projects will be long term, both women said. They are envisioning ways to connect residents to opportunities that will improve their lives. 

“This is an evolution of what Angela and I have always done, and that is to serve the community,” Wright said.