About Ives Construction
Nine years of taking apartment buildings apart and putting them back
We are a Greater Cleveland general contractor with one specialty: the renovation and revitalization of large multifamily communities, delivered while residents are still living in them.
The short version
Built from the owner's side of the table
Ives Construction was founded in 2016 to solve a problem that keeps showing up in Northeast Ohio multifamily: plenty of contractors can renovate an apartment, and almost none can renovate four hundred of them on a schedule an owner can plan around.
We started where most of this market starts — scattered-site houses and small multifamily buildings, a handful of units at a time. That work taught us the thing that matters most at scale: the renovation is the easy part. The hard part is procurement, sequencing, resident communication, and keeping a building leasing while the work is going on around it.
As the asset sizes grew, so did the discipline. Today our core project is a community of 150 units or more, and the properties we take on average well above fifty. We have delivered work across fourteen apartment communities totalling more than a thousand units, from a 12-unit building on a side street to a 153-unit community, plus several hundred scattered-site homes.
We know these buildings from the inside out — the 1920s brick walk-ups, the 1960s lakefront high-rises, the garden-style courts, and the historic commercial blocks that make better apartments than they ever made offices.
How we work
Four things we do not negotiate
The schedule is the promise
A renovation schedule is a leasing forecast with hammers attached. If a date is going to move, you hear it from us the week it becomes true — not at the next draw meeting.
Residents are not an obstacle
People live here. Notice goes out before we knock, water comes back on when we said it would, and the corridor is clean before the crew leaves.
Price the unknowns honestly
Old buildings hide things. We carry contingency openly and tell you what is behind the wall rather than discovering it conveniently after contract.
Build it to be operated
We specify finishes maintenance can source and repair for years, not whatever landed cheapest that quarter.
Licensing & insurance
Licensed, registered, insured — and happy to prove it
Ives Construction, LLC is an Ohio limited liability company operating as a general contractor on commercial and multifamily property.
Ohio does not issue a single statewide general contractor licence for this type of work. Instead, general contractors register with the municipality or county where a project is built, and the specialty trades are licensed at state level. We work within both: we hold contractor registration in the jurisdictions where we build, pull permits in the jurisdiction of record on every project, and all electrical, plumbing, HVAC, hydronics and refrigeration work is performed by contractors holding the applicable licence from the Ohio Construction Industry Licensing Board.
We carry commercial general liability and Ohio workers' compensation coverage. Certificates of insurance, W-9, licence and registration documentation, and references are included with every bid package — ask and they come with the number, not after it.
At a glance
- Entity: Ives Construction, LLC, an Ohio limited liability company
- Founded: 2016
- Specialty: Multifamily renovation and revitalization
- Core project size: 150+ unit communities
- Portfolio experience: 1,004 units across 14 communities
- Base: Eastlake, Ohio — Greater Cleveland
- Coverage: General liability and Ohio workers' compensation
- Trades: Ohio-licensed specialty contractors on all MEP scopes
- Safety: OSHA-compliant site safety program; EPA RRP lead-safe certified renovation on pre-1978 buildings
The bench
Who you actually deal with
A renovation program is only as good as the three or four people who run it day to day. These are the roles on every project we take.
Preconstruction lead
Walks the property, writes the scope, builds the budget and owns the number through buyout. The person who tells you what the building is really going to cost.
Project manager
Owns the contract, the schedule, procurement and change-order exposure. Your weekly reporting comes from here.
Site superintendent
On the property every day. Runs the crews and trades, coordinates unit access with management, and is the number the leasing office calls first.
Quality and closeout
Walks every unit against a written standard before it is released to leasing, drives the punch list and hands over warranties and O&M documentation.
Where we build
Greater Cleveland first, Ohio broadly
Our office and yard are in Eastlake, and most of our work sits inside an hour of it. We go further when the asset is large enough to carry a dedicated superintendent.
Counties served include Cuyahoga, Lake, Geauga, Lorain, Medina, Summit, Portage, Stark and Franklin. If your asset sits outside this list, send it anyway — the deciding factor is size, not distance.
Have an asset that needs to be brought back?
Send us the rent roll, a capital-needs summary or just the address. We will walk it, scope it and give you a number you can underwrite.