NEWS

Corlett Building now scheduled for demolition

BY VINCE FRATIANI

Once demolished, the site of the Corlett Building will serve as a farmers market. A visual arts center is planned for the site in the future, but funding for such a building has yet to materialize. The farmers market will tentatively operate on Thursdays from May until October.

The deteriorating Corlett Building on Euclid Avenue will be demolished on the week of July 13, paving the way for something far more fresh on the site.

Cleveland State has been in talks with the North Union Farmers Market to bring a farmers market to the university. The university architect’s office has identified the site of the Corlett Building as a prime site for such an endeavor.

Numerous local companies and organizations are on board with the project, which started as an idea by a student group that caught on and spread rapidly on campus. CSU plans to run a pilot program to test the idea’s effectiveness from early August until late October, according to Tania Anochin, project manager in the CSU architect’s office.

“If successful, the market would operate on Thursdays, May through October,” said Ed Schmittgen, university architect and executive director of capital planning.

The site will serve as parking and grassy space for the interim, until the farmer’s market can be established, according to the university architect’s office.

The demolition will begin as soon as the contractor finishes asbestos removal, Anochin said. Seven historically significant decorations will be removed from the building and preserved. These pieces include the Corlett sign and the gargoyle façade pieces.

The pieces will be incorporated into any future building on that site, Anochin said.

“Probably with a plaque that reads ‘here stood the Corlett Building’ or something like that,” she added.

The primary building proposed for that plot of land is a new visual arts center to improve the art department’s amenities and give them a higher profile on campus. With the recent deal with Playhouse Square to renovate the Allen Theater to house the theater arts program, the potential use of the visual arts center has changed.

The amount of performance area would be reduced, Schmittgen said.

“However the project is still very viable programmatically [as a] fine arts, dance, exterior and interior performance venue,” Schmittgen said.

The Corlett Building was built in 1914 as a home for Dr. William Corlett. It later housed two car dealerships and most recently was leased to the Cleveland Municipal Schools until the end of the 2005 school year, according to The Cleveland Stater archives.