The newly-launched, Land Bank 101 ‘Meet the Team’ series seeks to pull back the curtain on the people working every day on a mission to return land to productive use, reduce blight, increase property values, support community goals and improve quality of life.

In this first installment, Vince Adamus discusses his job as Environmental Project Manager and explains just what he does and why it’s critical to the Land Bank’s overall mission.

Meet Vince Adamus – he considers himself a Clevelander after his wife lured him here from Chicago more than 30 years ago. After decades of working in economic and community development in and around Greater Cleveland, in 2024 he joined the Land Bank.

Today he manages the Land Bank’s growing number of commercial brownfield projects. Over that last few years, former industrial properties have received significant state and federal funding, Adamus explains. The goal is to remediate land left with the lasting effects that come as a result of Cleveland’s robust manufacturing history.

Adamus explains that in and around Cleveland there are properties with everything from traces of radiation, mustard gas, asbestos to the ubiquitous lead but it means his work is, “personally fulfilling and significant because we are addressing real community problems.”

Adamus answered a variety of questions about what he does as the Environmental Project Manager at the Land Bank.

Q: What is it that you do at the Land Bank?
Adamus: The Land Bank, historically, had not been big in the brownfield and commercial property arena, but some funding opportunities arose, and my job was created to manage projects that revitalize blighted properties and create large re-developable sites. The Land Bank might manage the remediation, even if it’s not our property, and with these types of grants there is a lot of required reporting.

Q: What does a typical day look like for you?
Adamus: Because Cleveland was on the forefront of industrial manufacturing, there are all types of pollutants left behind from those processes.

Environmental regulations really didn’t kick into high gear before the early 70s and the aerospace, automotive, manufacturing and defense technology industries produced a lot of metal parts and processes that required oil and cleaning solvents – so there is a lot to clean up.

Some of those companies left town and others have gone out of business, meaning there was no funding to take care of what was left behind.

I’m generally overseeing the grant portion of things, but when I’m not doing the day-to-day project management in the office, I get to go into the field.

I have the bright, shiny vest so I don’t get run over by the construction vehicles and steel-toed construction boots. When I’m out, I find all sorts of interesting things. Recently, I toured a long-vacant factory, that now the Land Bank owns, where a scene from one of the Avenger movies was shot. It is on the East Side where the interrogation scene with Scarlett Johansson (from the Winter Solider) was filmed.

Q: What is the most interesting part of your job?
Adamus: One time I visited a company, where the owner told me that the property had been used to make battleship guns in World War II and had 70- or 80-feet tall ceilings and rail lines that came directly into the building. You don’t see places like that anymore. The Land Bank now owns that property.

Q: Do you have any good stories?
Adamus: Currently, I’m managing the former National Acme property. There was a three-story manufacturing building on the south side, and when we walked out of the floor level onto the property, we stepped off the concrete onto what we thought was the natural ground. It was actually four to six feet of garbage. It looked like dirt; there was foliage growing on it and it felt like we were walking on the ground but it was compacted trash.

Q: Why do you think your Land Bank work is important?
Adamus: First, the work I do is very personally fulfilling.

We are taking care of real problems out there and putting these properties back into use. Cuyahoga County is essentially a built-out, and we have to compete for business with outlying counties that have open greenfields for development.

What we’re doing is essentially creating shovel ready sites and creating development sites of scale for the region. We’re the front end of the funnel – obtaining the parcels and remediating them. No other land bank is doing this on our scale or level of activity.

Q: Here’s a fun question – What is your favorite building?
Adamus: There is a hotel at the corner of Carnegie Avenue and Stokes Boulevard – the Tudor Arms. It is an example of 1930s Gothic Revival. I’m attracted to masonry buildings, coming from Chicago. Chicago had neighborhoods like Cleveland that for decades were neglected, abused and run down, but there has been a revival of the building stock – the brick or brownstones are now functional housing.

Q: What is the biggest DIY project you’ve ever attempted or finished?
Adamus: When we moved into our house in Highland Heights, it was covered in wallpaper. I hate wallpaper, and every room was wallpapered, including the first floor bathroom. It had such gaudy, shiny, multi-colored wallpaper that it scared the kids. We spent a lot of time getting rid of all of it, and it was worth it.

Q: Finally – What social media do you use, and do you lurk or post?
Adamus: It is LinkedIn for work and Facebook for personal activities. I think it is important to separate work and personal life because, as I get older, I have opinions.

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The 32,000 square feet of state-of-the-art cold storage Miceli’s plans to complete in April 2026 was made possible in large part by partnering with the Cuyahoga Land Bank, explains Maria Miceli, vice president of marketing and third generation of the founding family.

The Land Bank was integral in securing a $2 million in Ohio brownfield funding for the remediation of the Gray Barrel & Drum Co., a storage drum incineration and reconditioning facility – which was fined $1.5 million by the EPA and state of Ohio.

Assembling the individual, contiguous parcels needed for the large facility’s footprint near where the original Miceli site was a priority, explains Maria Miceli, vice president of marketing and third generation of the founding family.

“My dad and my uncle were adamant about cleaning the property up – first because this is where we make our product but also for the overall benefit of the neighborhood,” Miceli said. “It took several years, and the Land Bank worked hard to help us assemble this land. We had to find different groups of ownership and work through a lot of liens and back taxes that were owed.”

Miceli’s is dedicated to keeping and growing, the nearly 75-year-old company, known for its Italian cheeses, including ricotta, provolone, fresh mozzarella and mascarpone, within the city of Cleveland’s borders.

The third-generation family business has grown to be one of the largest Italian cheese producers in the country and boasts 13 family members working at the East 90th Street where John Miceli, a milk delivery man turned cheese producer, started the business after immigrating from Italy.

The company has grown consistently throughout the years, currently employing about 250 people with plans to increase that number to 300 by the end of 2026, Miceli said.

Miceli’s expansion comes on the heels of the opening of Cleveland’s Opportunity Corridor in 2021. The multi-lane east-to-west roadway provides a direct route to I-490 improving logistics and accessibility for crucial deliveries and distribution, and makes it easier to bring in visitors and employees, Miceli points out.

“It great for our trucks. It provides a direct path for our milk deliveries, which we get about 10 times a day,” Miceli explains. “It’s also great for our existing employees and for recruiting more workers. It’s also great for visitors and customers to show them the real Cleveland when they drive here.

There is also about 1,000 acres surrounding the three-miles of Opportunity Corridor, just a block from Miceli’s production facility. 

The land assembly of just one six-acre plot that Miceli’s wanted for the most recent expansion included dealing with everything from tax delinquencies, property in probate, properties abandoned by owners, and parcels with blighted and burnt down buildings, Kim Steigerwald, Cuyahoga Land Bank’s director of acquisition and disposition said.

“Land assembly in these old neighborhoods can take years. Sometimes we must negotiate with current owners. We’ve had to work with utility companies that had investment in the area and that was a lot of red tape to go through,” Steigerwald said. “There has been a lot of properties in this neighborhood where we can’t easily track down the owner.”

Steigerwald said even with the Land Bank’s help, some parcels that have been particularly difficult. Some are tied up in estates with multiple heirs for what she says is, “an eternity.”

“We’re trying to acquire a property for the Food Bank, and it is part of a probate with multiple siblings, and all the siblings have to transfer their interest to the one owner. We had to create a couple fun databases so that they can find and call all the phone numbers associated with the land,” Steigerwald added.

Properties owned by LLCs are another challenge. The companies will stay current on taxes for land with relatively low value in an effort to wait out the market. The work to unravel deed ownership is so time consuming and difficult that sometimes companies are forced to hire private investigators to help.

Land assembly work by the Land Bank, Miceli stresses, has been and will be crucial for the company’s upcoming $128 million phase two and three of expansion planned for just west and north of the manufacturing facility built in 2010.

“The whole Buckeye-Woodland neighborhood is undergoing a little renaissance right now,” she continued. “The Land Bank has helped us with abandoned property the city owned that we had been maintaining. What the Land Bank did was assemble the whole group of parcels together as one purchase.”

Even with the unique challenges of land assembly in the mixed residential/commercial neighborhood around Miceli, the company and its multi-family owners plan to stay and grow.

“We are growing and growing our employee base here,” Miceli said. “A lot of our workers are from the neighborhood and actually walk in looking for jobs. We provide solid jobs, overtime, benefits, and we have a lot of employees with us for 20-30 years, and then they bring their whole families here. This is a family business but it’s not just my family. We have a lot of families that work here, and we wouldn’t want it any other way.”

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The Site Readiness for Good Jobs Fund (Site Readiness Fund) recently announced that the State of Ohio has awarded a $7.6 million brownfield remediation grant for a critical project in East Glenville and Collinwood. This funding will be used to clean up and demolish the former National Acme industrial facility on East 131st Street, a long-abandoned relic of Cleveland’s industrial past.

The once-bustling factory has stood abandoned for decades, a deteriorating reminder of a bygone era. Its crumbling facade, marred by graffiti and time, has become a symbol of neglect and decay. Once home to a major machine-tool manufacturer, the building eventually became a dumping ground and an environmental hazard. But now, thanks to a generous grant, this dilapidated structure filled with the dangerous pollutant asbestos is finally set for a long-overdue transformation.

National Acme is a textbook example of why the Site Readiness Fund was created,” said Brad Whitehead, the Fund’s Managing Director. “Addressing the multifaceted challenges of contaminated, fragmented and legally complicated brownfield sites is imperative. Remediating complex brownfield sites like this is essential to restoring vitality, creating opportunities, and ensuring sustainable development in Cleveland’s neighborhoods.”

The cleanup process could cost about $11 million, and the City of Cleveland generously contributed an additional $3.5 million. The funding will be allocated to Cuyahoga Land Bank, which will serve as the fiscal agent for the project.

“I am greatly appreciative of the Cuyahoga Land Bank for their involvement in the cleanup of the historic site known as National Acme,” City of Cleveland Ward 8 Councilman Mike Polensek said. His ward includes East Glenville and Collinwood Village. “This factory site had been a critical business in our community since 1918. Since its closure and subsequent abandonment, it has become an absolute eyesore. With the Land Bank’s engagement through the Site Readiness Fund, I hope this will, once again, be a site for employment and opportunity for the Greater Collinwood and Glenville communities.”

The project promises to not only improve the neighborhood’s appearance but also pave the way for future development. Rick Barga, Manager of Site Identification and Development for the Fund, added, “This cleanup will bring relief to residents and businesses alike. Once the site is ready, we look forward to welcoming a community-focused partner that will drive job creation and economic growth here.”

The Site Readiness Fund was established in August 2023 by Mayor Justin Bibb in partnership with Cleveland City Council with $50 million in seed funding. This nationally unique nonprofit aims to breathe new life into 1,000 acres of neglected real estate, catalyzing the creation of 25,000 jobs, supporting neighborhood vitality, building wealth among residents and enhancing environmental sustainability.

Learn more about the Site Readiness for Good Jobs Fund HERE.

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