Ameritrust Tower
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The 9 Cleveland is a residential and commercial complex located in
Downtown Cleveland Downtown Cleveland is the central business district of Cleveland, Ohio, United States. The economic and cultural center of the city and the Cleveland metropolitan area, it is Cleveland's oldest district, with its Public Square, Cleveland, Publi ...
,
Ohio Ohio ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Lake Erie to the north, Pennsylvania to the east, West Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Indiana to the ...
, United States, at the corner of East Ninth Street and Euclid Avenue. It includes three buildings, the largest of which is a 29-story, tower commonly known by its previous name of Ameritrust Tower and formerly known as the Cleveland Trust Tower. The tower was completed in
1971 * The year 1971 had three partial solar eclipses (Solar eclipse of February 25, 1971, February 25, Solar eclipse of July 22, 1971, July 22 and Solar eclipse of August 20, 1971, August 20) and two total lunar eclipses (February 1971 lunar eclip ...
and is an example of
brutalist architecture Brutalist architecture is an architectural style that emerged during the 1950s in the United Kingdom, among the reconstruction projects of the post-war era. Brutalist buildings are characterised by Minimalism (art), minimalist constructions th ...
, the only high-rise building designed by
Marcel Breuer Marcel Lajos Breuer ( ; 21 May 1902 – 1 July 1981) was a Hungarian-American modernist architect and furniture designer. He moved to the United States in 1937 and became a naturalized American citizen in 1944. At the Bauhaus he designed the Was ...
and Hamilton Smith. The complex also includes the adjacent Cleveland Trust Company Building, completed in 1908, and the
Swetland Building The Swetland Building is a building located in Downtown Portland, downtown Portland, Oregon, Portland, Oregon, listed on the National Register of Historic Places. History Camera World was headquartered in the building from 1977 until the late ...
. Although plans called for a second mirror-image tower, the second building was never constructed. The Breuer tower initially served as headquarters for Ameritrust Bank before its merger with
Society Bank KeyBank is an American regional bank headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio, and the 27th largest bank in the United States. Organized under the publicly traded KeyCorp, KeyBank was formed from the 1994 merger of the Cleveland-based Society Corpora ...
. Society Bank has since merged with
KeyBank KeyBank is an American regional bank headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio, and the 27th largest bank in the United States. Organized under the publicly traded KeyCorp, KeyBank was formed from the 1994 merger of the Cleveland-based Society Corpora ...
. The tower was vacant from 1996 until September 2014, before it was converted to apartments and a hotel as part of a larger project involving the other buildings in the complex. The space also includes a wine cellar and restaurant. The rotunda was renovated and reopened as a
Heinen's Fine Foods Heinen's is an American family-owned and operated regional supermarket chain that was founded in 1929. The chain has locations in Northeast Ohio and in the Chicago metropolitan area. It was founded by Joe Heinen, a butcher, who opened the firs ...
grocery store in 2015 and the Swetland Building was restored for residential use.


Ameritrust Tower 1991 proposal

In 1990, developer Richard Jacobs proposed constructing a new tower for the AmeriTrust Corporation on Cleveland's Public Square. About $500 million was budgeted for the project. The Architectural firm of
Kohn Pedersen Fox Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates (KPF) is an American architectural firm based in New York City that provides architecture, interior, programming and master planning services. They engineer different projects including civic and cultural spaces, com ...
or KPF of New York City would have designed the new AmeriTrust Tower. Coincidentally, KPF would have designed the new Cuyahoga County Administration Building which was planned in the late 2000s to replace the Ameritrust Tower (built in 1971). In 1992, Ameritrust merged with Society Bank (now
KeyBank KeyBank is an American regional bank headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio, and the 27th largest bank in the United States. Organized under the publicly traded KeyCorp, KeyBank was formed from the 1994 merger of the Cleveland-based Society Corpora ...
), obviating the need for the Ameritrust Tower. Had the Ameritrust Tower been built, it was planned to be 61 stories, 920 feet tall to the roof, and have a curved glass curtain wall, a Hyatt Hotel, and high-end shopping including Giorgio Armani and Versace as anchor tenants.


2005 purchase

In 2005,
Cuyahoga County Cuyahoga County ( or , see ) is a large urban county located in the northeastern part of the U.S. state of Ohio. The county seat and most populous city is Cleveland. As of the 2020 census, its population was 1,264,817, making it the second ...
purchased the tower, the historic Cleveland Trust Company rotunda, and several other surrounding structures from the Jacobs Group for use as the site for a new county headquarters. This was done after a study completed by Weber Murphy Fox and Orfield Laboratories, had concluded that the building was a very high quality for office occupancy, when compared with the Hudson Department Store building, which the County was considering for office occupancy. On March 29, 2007, the Cuyahoga County Commissioners voted to demolish the tower and to replace it with a new building to be designed by
Kohn Pedersen Fox Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates (KPF) is an American architectural firm based in New York City that provides architecture, interior, programming and master planning services. They engineer different projects including civic and cultural spaces, com ...
. Two commissioners, James "Jimmy" Dimora and Timothy Hagan, wanted to demolish the tower, while commissioner Peter Lawson-Jones supported renovation. The Cleveland Planning Commission approved demolition of the landmark Ameritrust Tower, to the chagrin of preservationists, who argued that the county would destroy a valued piece of architecture. A June 2008
Cleveland Magazine ''Cleveland Magazine'' is a monthly magazine focused on Northeastern Ohio, USA. It was founded in 1972. The inaugural April 1972 issue featured a young Dennis Kucinich, a frequent profile subject of the magazine. Published monthly by the Great L ...
article said that the county's own consultants told commissioners that it would be cheaper and more prudent to renovate the tower for its own use. However, later in 2007, the Cuyahoga County Commissioners, claiming a desire to devote more of their energies for Medical Mart and Convention Center, decided to attempt to sell the complex to private developers. The County declared that it would not sell the property for less than $35 million, which represented the purchase price plus expenditures on the property, including the removal of asbestos. The only bid on the complex was submitted by the K&D group of
Willoughby, Ohio Willoughby is a city in Lake County, Ohio, United States, along the Chagrin River. The population was 23,959 at the time of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. A suburb of Cleveland, it is part of the Greater Cleveland, Cleveland metropol ...
, for $35,005,000 however the deal fell apart in 2009. Federal investigators scrutinized the 2005 purchase of the Ameritrust complex, the attempted sale, and the removal of the asbestos as part of their probe into corruption in the Cuyahoga County government. In 2012, federal prosecutors alleged that attorney Anthony Calabrese III had offered to bribe county employee J. Kevin Kelley in 2005 if Kelley could convince Dimora to vote to purchase the complex. The accusation was contained in a witness-tampering charge against Calabrese, which was later dropped.


2013 sale and rebranding

In December 2012, Cuyahoga County Executive Ed FitzGerald announced that the County would sell the Ameritrust complex, including the tower, the rotunda building, and two other office buildings to the Geis Companies of
Streetsboro, Ohio Streetsboro is a city in western Portage County, Ohio, United States. The population was 17,260 at the 2020 census. It is part of the Akron metropolitan area. The city was formed from the former Streetsboro Township of the Connecticut Western Re ...
, for $27 million. Geis Cos. agreed to raze the smaller buildings, known as the P&H buildings, and to build an eight story office building to be used by the County as a consolidated headquarters building. The parties envisioned that the county would move about 750 employees into the newly constructed building from eight other locations by mid-2014. The County agreed to make lease payments of $6.7 million on 222,000 square feet of space for a period of 26 years with a County option to buy the new building at the end of the term for $1.
Chaim Schochet Chaim Schochet (born 1986/87) is an American real estate executive, developer, and manager at Optima Ventures, once the largest holder of real estate in Downtown Cleveland. Early life Schochet was born to a Jewish family in Miami Beach, Florida, ...
argued against the project stating that the last thing Cleveland needed was more office space and instead proposed that the headquarters be put on the first six floors of the half vacant
Huntington Bank Building The Centennial, formerly The 925 Building, and Huntington Building, originally the Union Trust Building, is a high-rise office building on Euclid Avenue (Cleveland, Ohio), Euclid Avenue in the Nine-Twelve District of downtown Cleveland, Ohio, US ...
owned by Optima Ventures. The Cuyahoga County Council approved the sale in January 2013. Geis Cos. took ownership of the Ameritrust complex in February 2013. The tower now houses 104 apartments and a luxury hotel known as the Metropolitan.
Heinen's Heinen's is an American family-owned and operated regional supermarket chain that was founded in 1929. The chain has locations in Northeast Ohio and in the Chicago metropolitan area. It was founded by Joe Heinen, a butcher, who opened the firs ...
, a Cleveland-based high-end grocer, opened a store in the Ameritrust Rotunda on February 25, 2015.


See also

*
List of tallest buildings in Cleveland Cleveland, the second most populous city in the U.S. state of Ohio, has 51 completed high-rises taller than . The tallest building in Cleveland is the 57- story Key Tower, which rises on Public Square. The tower has been the tallest building ...


References


External links


Cleveland Skyscrapers: Cleveland Trust Tower Cleveland Memory Project historic shots
{{Supertall proposed skyscrapers Office buildings completed in 1971 Brutalist architecture in Ohio Skyscraper hotels in Cleveland Residential skyscrapers in Cleveland Marcel Breuer buildings