The City of Cleveland developed the Community Benefit Scorecard to objectively evaluate development projects seeking city incentives. With this scorecard, the city can assess a project's alignment with its community priorities, ensuring that developments deliver tangible benefits to the community. This process increases transparency for developers and ensures that the city awards incentives to projects that contribute to Cleveland’s broader goals. The scorecard is currently in a testing phase, and the city will refine it based on feedback and data to establish clear thresholds for incentive eligibility. We encourage developers to review the scorecard, participate in the feedback process, and explore innovative ways to deliver meaningful community benefits through their projects.
WHY A COMMUNITY BENEFIT SCORECARD?
- Community Accountability: The scorecard ensures that development projects deliver tangible benefits to the community. It identifies community benefits in development projects and informs future community benefits agreements.
- Objective Decision-Making: It moves the city away from subjective decision-making around incentives, providing a clearer framework that reduces bias or favoritism.
- Alignment with City Goals: By incorporating categories like sustainability, job creation, and affordable housing, the scorecard encourages development that aligns with Cleveland's broader priorities.
We recommend using the Scorecard to help shape your future projects to maximize community impact and to decide which projects to take on. City Staff will score projects, so you don't need to do that as a developer, but you are welcome to if you wish.
When you apply for incentives on a project, you will be asked to complete an application. You should make sure that your application includes all relevant information for our staff to complete the Scorecard for your project. You may reference specific Scorecard categories in your project narrative, if helpful.
The scorecard will be used by Economic Development to evaluate projects for tax incentives such as TIFs, and Commercial Tax Abatements, as well as loans and grants over $250,000 in value. For programs such as the Storefront Renovation Program and the Neighborhood Retail Assistance Program, or other small loans and grants below $250,000 in value, the scorecard is not needed. The Job Creation Income Tax Credit program will be awarded to all eligible projects, and does not require a scorecard evaluation.
Community Development will use the parameters in the scorecard to inform their scoring rubric for their Housing Development Office RFPs, however, since funding is competitive, applications are not currently accepted on a rolling basis.
For Residential Tax Abatement alone, the scorecard will not be applied, and applicants should follow guidance at this link to apply.
The scorecard is currently in a testing phase. The City will eventually set a threshold below which projects will not be eligible for incentives. In the meantime, it is helpful to remember that most projects will not score points in all categories, and the total score should not be thought of like a grade on a test. Rather, the scorecard is a tool that helps the City and Developers identify community benefits that are a part of projects.
After you complete your application, Economic Development Staff will discuss potential tools that might be suitable for your project. All projects are subject to underwriting to determine the total incentive package.
For the first 6 to 12 months, as the City uses the scorecard for the first time, data will be collected on incoming projects. This data will inform any necessary adjustments to the tool and help establish future thresholds for project eligibility or how scores translate to incentive offerings. The City is committed to making data-informed decisions about economic development incentives moving forward.
Each category in the scorecard represents one or more community benefits. Certain project elements communicated through the scorecard process may need to be formalized in a Community Benefits Agreement. Community Benefits Agreements are primarily negotiated by the Office of Equal Opportunity (OEO), however projects with a higher score are less likely to need to bring additional community benefits to the table, beyond the basic items required by the Community Benefits Ordinance.
The Economic Development and Community Development departments will share information about your project with OEO internally. As these are new processes for both the City and developers, the City is committed to using this testing phase to refine workflow and decision-making, ensuring a smooth process for developers.
Point values represent how important certain project elements are to the City. They are based on the City’s prioritization of items in the scorecard and are not necessarily linked to the cost of executing those elements.
The scorecard includes an "Other Community Benefits" category, where staff can award up to 5 additional points at their discretion for community benefits not explicitly listed in the scorecard. We encourage you to detail these benefits in the project narrative with your application.
Yes! User feedback is incredibly valuable during the testing phase, and beyond. We welcome your feedback here: Take the Survey!
Once you submit your application, it will be scored by the assigned Economic Development staff person and the City Planning Neighborhood Planner for the neighborhood where your project is located. The score will then be validated by another Economic Development staff person.
We will score the project within 2 weeks of receiving the completed application.
If you disagree with the points awarded to your project or if certain eligible elements were not included in your application, you can discuss this at your incentive meeting. You may be asked to provide additional information about specific project elements to potentially receive a revised score.