greyrat

Really sad to see the condition that the CAC has been allowed to deteriorate to. It looks like the lousy owner has not ran any type of HVAC for 8 years to the degree that the interior is in shambles. Having been in this building a few times before it closed - it is a shock that someone would be so negligent allow this to happen. I had viewed the CAC to be civic treasure and this investor allowed the place to rot.

never seen that "colorized" picture before either. amazing what people find on this site. thx for posting it.

I love this building. Anybody know why on the 5th floor from the top, the windows seem to be about a foot (or more) shorter than the rest of the floors. So many unique features to this building that I can't keep from looking at it when in that area.

That's the place. Interesting history of the "Mad Hatter". Thanks.

Watch the video(or not). It's not a hatchet job on Cleveland though. For nothing else it has some interesting video of the city that you may not have seen. I think many northern industrial cities in the 60's and 70's and even 80's were feeling pressure to "do something" to revitalize their city cores - and the issues facing these cities were not simple issues. Almost a perfect storm of loss of manufacturing jobs, urban renewal planning, racial issues. One thing that I get out of the "Making Sense of Place - Cleveland: Confronting Decline in an American City" video - that I believe in, is that it's the smaller local grass roots groups and entrepreneurs that have a lasting positive impact on the city and it's landscape as opposed to the big ticket plans, with big ticket money and big ticket backing.

In the video - which is recent, they show a security guard going from vacant floor to vacant floor of the BP building. I guess it was implied that the building was vacant. Certainly looked like it. I'm not looking to change history. If the BP building has little to no vacancy - then I'm wrong and was making an assumption based on the Urban decline video.

There is (was) a 2 story warehouse next to the Salvation Army bldg. on E.18th street that I drive past on my usual commute downtown. The warehouse was in a sea of surface lots. I often wondered if some entrepreneurial soul might someday do something with this building or just what could go in there. When I drove past on Wednesday the place was 80% demolished. Thursday 100% down with just rubble being picked through by a back hoe. I assume Monday it will be as if there was never a building there. Not a spectacular or grand place - just another old place that has bit the dust. I imagine the footprint of this place will become a surface lot.

I.M. Pei still gets work after designs like this?? The ny times article is interesting - the title and claims of boom and rebirth, amount to hyperbole for the most part. I think this kind of stuff gets repeated so much that people start to believe it. People still think Voinovich was some kind of savior that "turned around" Cleveland. The part of the article that rings true in retrospect is the counter point 'In fact, some urban experts here argue there has been little real growth but rather a shift from the older buildings to the new. There is concern that overbuilding on the edges of downtown will leave a vacant core area. ''Our market is not growing,'' said Norman Krumholz, a former city planning director and now an urban affairs specialist at Cleveland State University. ''The big users just want this year's location.''' The BP building which the NY Times article points at as being part of the downtown rebirth now sits mainly vacant - as can be seen in this 2011 video at the 8 minute mark on urban decline - focused on Cleveland: http://youtu.be/KpWS4_YtkUg The BP building is no longer the new/desired place to setup office evidently. Maybe Wolsteins new Ernst & Young tower is the new BP building? It's evident to me that political leaders nor the big money powers in Cleveland really have had a plan on stemming urban decline. As can be seen at the 11 minute mark - city officials responded to the flight to the suburbs with plans to wholesale tear down of vacant buildings in order to create parking. Ostensibly this was done in an attempt to compete with retail suburban Malls with huge parking lots. Cleveland is not alone here - this template played out in many industrial Midwest cities across the country. Sad. The medicine was to tear down downtown to save downtown. I think tearing down buildings is and has been an easy way to show "progress" during any given politicians tenure. Any plan that could of stemmed urban decline would of been a long term 10-20 yr plan which I just don't think our political system at the local level is capable of. And let's not forget what the BP building replaced - with Voinovich's blessing, and to the cheers of the public who viewed this as progress. I guess when the media is telling you this is progress, the politicians are saying this is progress, it just becomes conventional wisdom to talk about this as "progress"

Looking Good! I assume the brick replacements will be painted to match the original bricks, which I also assume were not painted originally.

Shipping containers club?? Was that in the original vision of this space? I know it's changed from neighborhood, to movie theater district, to condos, to public beach to generic mediocrity. The FEB could of been such a great area, and I am not impressed with the long and winding development that has taken place there. Maybe I am not the target audience for this "new" area - which is fine by me as I do not plan to ever visit this area nor hang out at the shipping container club. (R.I.P. Kindlers)

This building is such a stunning, eye catching building. It really dominates the landscape and draws your eye. At least mine. Was googling around and found some of the most stunning high res pictures of some of Clevelands lost architecture treasures including a shot of the City Savings bldg. circa 1905 (City Club) here: http://www.shorpy.com/node/11184 You can see the edge of the Schofield building in the pic. In this pic the Schofield would of been 4 years young. I also recommend checking the high res pics of the Hollenden Hotel circa 1900 and the Williamson bldg. 1905. Wow.

Small update on this. I noticed today that the workers have added a section to their lift that will allow them to remove the remaining panels on the corner. I would imagine (if they work like they have been) that they should have the corner totally exposed in a couple of business days.

Htsguy - if you don't want to sound pissy - then don't BE pissy.

Another drawing eh? Looks radically different from the recent movie theater village drawing. Put them next to each other and they aren't even close in resemblance. Seems like a lost opportunity to me - flats really had some uniqueness and history - oh well, "what is done is done" as the mafia would say. And for the office building - would of been nice to have it down on one of those 3 or 4 blocks of surface lots from public sq. to the warehouse district. So many blocks of surface lots in the city core that could really use something like this. Seems kind of disjointed putting this in the flats - from a city wide planning perspective. Speaking of which - is there a masterplan to this type of wacky of growth? Anybody have any links on how the city leadership want to grow this city? (building wise). I would like to check it out - seriously. I highly expect the current drawing to change this fall if the Casino issue passes on the ballot. I would expect Wolstein to make a pitch for a casino on these grounds. I'm sure he would rather have that than green space. I can't say I blame him.

Another tax code idea i was thinking about that could be altered to stop these demolitions would be to have a reverse tax abatement then what we have now. Start reducing taxes on buildings 50 yrs. older or more, and at 80 yrs. or more abate them altogether. This will allow the owners to make repairs and upkeep as needed. At the same time do away with new construction abatement which we currently use now (ie abate for 15yrs of new construction). This seems to put existing structures in an adverse competition with new abated structures. From the speed we demolish buildings we obviously have a glut - why abate just to have new when we throw away so much that is not even 100 yrs old?? I realize there are alot of holes in such a proposal - but this is just a quick idea that generally seems reasonable.

Read through this last night. Review: I laughed, I cried, I pulled my hair out. Some of the comments on the HOJO hotel had me LOL bigtime. So did the comment on midtown Euclid ave. being ready for farming, maybe that's what we can do over there now - plant rows of corn and vegetables. Sad about those 2 lone buildings (e. 55th/57th) from the past standing there neglected on Euclid, I often wondered what could be done with them and why something wasn't done with them, and who owned them and what they were thinking, while driving past in route to Coventry. If we plant corn and vegetables over there we can show the insane progress of coming full circle from Agriculture to boom town in the 1900-1940's back to Agriculture. All in 100 yrs. or so. Also RIP Corlett bldg. - you looked good to me. How ironic is it that HOJO hotel is still standing? Is it? I don't make it out to the East side often. That's one building that looked out of place and really not that interesting (imho), and yet the owners are trying to stop demo for a renovation. Of all the buildings. Unbelievable. There must be some change this city can make to the surface parking lot code that makes it severely tax prohibitive to run a surface lot. I heard an urban planner on NPR once who mentioned an interesting idea of how the footprint of land in cities should all have an "opportunity cost". Meaning land can be used for many different uses and for cities surface parking is one of the worst uses and should be taxed accordingly to the point that it's more than if they had a building on its footprint. If you choose to have a surface lot then you are not making good use of the land in a city. If you look at any aerial view of CLE - surface parking DOMINATES our cities' landscape. From ready this thread it looks like it is accelerating. There is obviously monetary incentive to run surface lots. This needs to stop yesterday. Any parking should be 3+ stories.

I would like to correct myself from a previous post about "lack of dissent" to the demo and retract that statement. I've been reading this war & peace thread on the FEB from recent posts backwards. It looks like there were quite a few concerned posters (in 20's thread pages) about the total demo of all the historic buildings and concern over the generic approach Wolstein seemed to be taking. (which really sums up my overly long tirades) That's really all us concerned citizens can do I guess. I mean this is Wolstein's property, Wolstein's vision and Wolstein's mess. He had all the marbles here. As far as are local politico's - like Jackson and Cimperman. These guys strike me as being so desperate for any business interest in CLE that they will do anything for any "plan". Want to demo the entire east bank? "OK SIR! we'll tape off the entire area for you and help you with any grants/funding needed. Let us know if we can do anything else SIR." Want to film spiderman here? "OK SIR! We'll pave and then close off all of Euclid Ave. for you for 3 weeks. Let us know if you need anything else SIR. Thanks for choosing Cleveland" Truly desperate or truly stupid on how to run a city.

Well then the apple didn't fall far from the tree BarneyBoy. The younger Wolstein was able to follow through on his fathers grand vision of "tearing it all down". I find it interesting (or karmic) that we both used the word "filling in" in our posts - I was typing up my tome and hadn't seen your post until after I had submitted mine. The area did need filling in and the properties needed to be turned into different uses other than rows of bars. Seeing how he owned most of the land - Wolstein was and is partly responsible for it's decline. Not realizing soon enough that the Frat Boy Bar party atmosphere of the flats was wearing thin and young adults were going elsewhere and having no idea on how to change the area - other than this crap we have designed now on his FEB website. There was nothing wrong with most of the buildings in that area. They did need to change the use of 90% of them. The all-bars all the time flats was history. Those buildings weren't always bars. Many of those buildings could of been turned into many different types of uses and still have that historic character and feel that the area should have retained. Of course I feel Kindlers should have remained a bar as it always had been since horse and buggys were delivering patrons to it's doors. So by the looks of the renderings Wolstein would like would like to turn his emminent domained land into "Crocker Park - Downtown". I wonder if he will get a "Hoggies" to take the place where Kindlers once stood?? Or maybe a TGIF's??? Maybe he can call his new "neighborhood" Wolstein Park Village Office Towers Neighborhood?? Although for a while he was going for Wolstein Medical Mart Village Neighborhood, but he just couldn't sell his vision to those Chicago guys. Hard to believe with all the detailed planning that went into it. I am very glad my tax dollars are going to assist this visionary. (sarcasm) I've read through about 40 pages of this thread and I must say I was a little disappointed in the lack of dissent (and in some cases actual enthusiasm) in regards to this FEB demolition from many posters. Obviously, there was more to the flats than just bars from the 1980's. A true piece of cleveland history - wiped out over a summer. I'm also sorry that I wasn't a member of this forum then and would have like to spark some debate on this issue and maybe got into action on doing something about it. I don't want to be an apathetic citizen, but it is hard to stay on top of this stuff.

@Punch - Kindlers never turned into a dance club. When it became "Club Amsterdam" they added some lounge sofas upstairs and took out a couple of the pool tables up there. Like they were trying to make it a "Friends" type W. 6th bar. The first floor they took out some the cool leaded glass and oak original cabinetry, but kept some too. It was still 85% original or so. Still had the beautiful long bar that led to the corner entry door. The entry door area was a work of art itself with the leaded glass and woodwork. I believe they retained the original Oak ice boxes behind the bar - but could be mistaken. I remember it had a really old phone booth built into the wall that was pretty cool. They still had lunch times with the old red and white checkered table cloths - these went away at night for the DJ (when it was Club Amsterdam) - these stayed put all day and night when it was Kindlers. So it was still very much the original historic bar very much a part of the area for 100+ years. Just the last 10 were bad for the whole area - so, tear it ALL down?? That's real creative thinking Scott. I've taken my meds and cooled off - but I've been stewing over what has happened there for about 2 years (since Kindlers was torn down). I only recently found this website. Part of my anger at Wolstein in particular is that people with his wealth, influence and power have a duty not to trash the history that makes our city unique and gives it it's character and soul. (and even more desirable IMO). I have a 3 1/2 yr. old at home, I don't have time to protest and organize against the wealthy and powerful who flippantly make these decisions to tear places like this down. His wealth and ownership of the FEB comes with a civic responsibility. When I first heard his plans of making this area a "neighborhood" I was really optimistic. I could envision filling in the surface lots with some unique tight streets, putting up maybe some 2-3 story brownstones down some of these streets. Sure maybe taking down a few of the more decayed buildings on the water that just don't work and putting up a modern 10-15 story condo unit/office tower. Turn some of the existing historic buildings into coffee houses/ice cream parlors for the neighborhood that is being developed. Maybe even saving a little bit of the waterfront for a neighborhood park - for the "neighborhood". Any parking would be in a multi-level garage - maybe down by the railroad tracks where the RTA crosses over. That would of been my general plan. This "filling in" would of been done gradually so I didn't have to get a bazillion dollars in advance to begin. So now that this has played out it's plain to see. There was no vision to make this a "neighborhood". This was about building high priced condos, office towers and relocating existing CLE businesses to these office towers - ground will be broken once said businesses have signed a lucrative lease with the Wolstein group tax abated of course. What's this do for CLE other than take E&Y from the business district (and existing landlords paying taxes) and sticks them in the flats?? If he was going to pull a load of Microsoft employees/operations to come here and setup shop in his towers - then I guess I would hold my nose and accept his plan as "progress". What we have is not progress but a disaster. Wolstein even made a pitch for the Medical Mart in the 11th hour. Was that in his neighborhood plan?? I don't really think he had much of a plan, step 1 which he has executed - BULLDOZE all buildings north of the shoreway bridge into rubble. Step 2 - shake down my political connections for PUBLIC funding - also executed. The current plan that I see on the FEB website makes me wretch. This debacle is the poster child for all that is wrong with civic planning. Even if he executes the office tower/theatre and whatever else - it can't replace the gems that were lost and it saddens me. IMO opinion this is a huge step backwards for that area.

I never will get over the fact that this loser (Wolstein) had the gall to tear down Kindlers. A near 100 yr. old establishment dripping with character and history. Longshoremen were knocking back ales and eggs in this place when this jerk's old man was in diapers. He may of owned the property but in my view he didn't have the right to demolish that piece of Cleveland history. It could of been incorporated into his stupid generic "movie theater" neighborhood. There were many other historic buildings in that area that should have been retained. None were "deteriorating". Hell some of those restaurants were virtually new. I've been posting on the Schofield renovation project thread. Some of the posts on there are of people like me looking back at the glory of Euclid Ave. and thinking "how could they of been so stupid in the 60's and 70's to tear some of those buildings down, what a shame!!? Well folks in my opinion that is exactly what has happened here in 2006-08 with the East Bank of the Flats. The East bank has been on the slide - just like Euclid in the 60's and 70's, so Mr. Big Businessman Wolstein figured he needed to shake things up a bit to gets things right. Time to call in some political favors and get some Emminent Domain action going to steal peoples' property. (The implementation of this law is horrible) Then get some hastily drawn proposals up and start lobbying for some PUBLIC funding. Who cares if my business plan is garbage. Then lets get out the wrecking ball and start knocking down some history. Anybody who LOVED Cleveland like he says would have incorporated a few of those buildings into his plan. There was tons of space to work them in - 80% of that area was surface parking. Kindlers could of been the quaint historic corner pub for his fake neighborhood if this loser had any vision, heart or soul. I don't believe for a second that Wolstein was doing this out of Altruistic movitations for Cle. He saw $$ dollar signs on the hot real estate market and wanted to turn an depreciating area into fast money. Mr. Wolstein is the worst type of political vulture that has been feasting on this city for years. Don't confuse this golden spooned fool for some type of entrepreneur. He is not. He is a leech. He is no better than the losers who tore down some of our proudest historic buildings for parking lots and collecting "urban renewal" funds in the 60's and 70's. I know this post has alot of venom. But I do hold grudges, i live in CLE and I will never go to this joke neighborhood he builds or his stupid theater. I wish he would just leave town - before he tries to take the Terminal Tower by emminent domain, bulldozes it and puts in a Walmart in its place. Thanks Scott.

So from the rendering picture i can see where the hippodrome theatre was next to the City Club - we currently have a surface parking lot. Real Nice. What vibrant city doesn't need one of those. Was the Richman Bros. department store on Prospect behind the Hippodrome? Where we currently have another parking lot (at least it is mult-level). Tearing down buildings must of been in the city charter.

Thanks for finding that pic Mayday. Looking at that 1979 "complex construction" proposed office drawing for E. 9th and Euclid - really, really, really makes me appreciate what is going on with the uncovering and restoration of the Schofield building even more. Wow! CLE could of lost 2 more historic buildings for THAT!! Jeez.

@ lafont - I walked past today and one of the corner panels at the very top right corner is off. There is still 2 more panels but it does shows a nicely curved corner underneath that I can see. Should be nice! On a side note - I read somewhere that this building was slated to be torn down in the 70's for a new "Euclid Tower" building - I'm sure it would of been a freakin 70's horror show of a building. Think goodness that project fell thru. Ever notice how some of the cooler parts of CLE are the one's the politicians and "movers and shakers" have just left alone or just forgotten about for a long time? (ohio city, tremont, warehouse district, even e. 4th - even though this street is a bit over the top for me) These areas evolved and came back to vibrancy without government subsidies to tear down buildings and build some kind of flavor of the year generic building.

I was kind of surprised by that orangish-red brick. Hard to imagine that is how the brick looked originally. From seeing the darkness of the brick (pre-cleaning) I was expecting a more maroon. This will look very cool when done - indeed! Anybody know how the inside looks?? Does the building have Brass elevator doors/Marble in places and other amenities that other older buildings downtown have/had? Or perhaps these were replaced with Mirrored elevator doors and brown shag carpeting?? I can see that they are doing a total rip-out on the 2nd floor. Looks like walls and all are being removed.

I walk past this building every day. A funny thing to note about the 1960's - 1970's remodel and veneer. It looks like when they put up the aluminum panels that they reduced the window sizes by several feet. You can see where they framed in the around the old brick windows to have a smaller size window that matched up to the aluminum panels. Who would want that? It also looks like the ground floor storefronts had high ceilings and large glass window fronts at one time. This was obscured by the large brown panels on the ground floor level. I agree with another poster that even with the old neglected beatup brick - the building looks better and more intriguing than that brown/yellow veneer. This building may turn out to be a jewel on Euclid Ave.