The Chicle Building apartments and adjoining land on the 10300 block of Detroit Avenue on Cleveland’s West Side are now owned by a Cupertino, Calif.-based investor group.
The five-story building — constructed by a founder of The American Chicle Co. in 1888 to produce Chiclets chewing gum — along with nine adjoining townhouse and 5 acres of grass-covered land, was bought by a group calling itself “Chicle Luxury Apartments LLC” and “Chicle Land Development LLC.”
The seller was 10307 Detroit Avenue Limited Partnership, a group led by Betty Kemper, the well-known owner of The Kemper Co. of Cleveland, which also operates KemperHouse Alzheimer’s and dementia care facilities in Strongsville and Highland Hills and provides associated services for older people. Kemper led the conversion of the empty industrial building to apartments in 2004 and listed both the apartment buildings and townhouse as the “Chicle Properties” unit of Kemper Co.
The new owner bought the buildings and land because they allowed the investors to move into a larger property than they had owned previously, according to a phone interview with Krishna Kandula Venkata Naga Rama, the managing member of the company owning the Cleveland properties.
“We also liked the location near the Metro,” he said of the property’s location across Detroit from the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority’s West Boulevard rapid transit station. The group needs to repair the building’s facade and make other updates, so it has no immediate plans for the vacant land.
“We don’t want to double down,” he said, referring to putting outsized investments into a just-acquired property. The group also has not decided if it wants to sell the empty site — which would attract a homebuilder because it could house multiple units on a parcel that’s likely ready to go for that.
Nine townhouses in a distinctive modern style developed on adjacent land in the early to mid-2000s were included in the deal, according to Cuyahoga County land records. The avant garde townhouses are held by the same ownership groups. However, it appears that at least some of the units were sold in the development in the mid- to late 2000s and later bought back by the developer.
The Chicle name comes from the property’s association with The American Chicle Co., founded by William J. White, who produced chewing gum in the kitchen of his Lorain Avenue home, created several brands, and later acquired Beeman Chewing Gum. Its best-known product was Chiclets, which are no longer produced, according to the website. The company is now part of Mondelez International of Deerfield, Ill.
Gum was last made at the plant on the West Side in 1921, according to “The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History.”
The nearly 50-unit complex has just four empty suites, Rama said.
Cuyahoga County assigns the property a market value of $1.1 million for tax purposes. Land records show the new owner took out a $1.5 million mortgage for the acquisition.
However, the deed transfer does not show a sale price for the property, so it cannot be determined if either party in the deal got a sweet price.
