Re: Hilliard/Westwood Theater
Posted: Fri Nov 11, 2011 4:54 pm
Now that the Hilliard/Westwood theater has finally come up in earnest conversation, I have a few words to say about it.
As it happens, I have had an intimate relationship with the Hilliard theater building. The owner is a friend of mine and at one time my brother and I were in a purchase agreement with him to buy it.
My brother's angle was to use it in part as a summer workshop space in association with New York's New School and Actor's Studio. At the time, he was associated with Parsons School of Design and an award-winning tv broadcast designer. With it would have come all manner of digital video equipment under an educationally subsidized program and the resultant seasonal influx of creative college students. In essence, the space would be rehabbed as a soundstage and recording venue first and a public performance venue second. This was to facilitate the rehab and to get around parking problems in the short term. The plan called for an increase in public performances over time as the project developed.
My angle on it was to be as project manager and historic preservation liaison with local preservation and national theater preservation communities, and to facilitate the formation of a 501c-3 and its board. I had even designed new HVAC systems in advance and planned roof repair strategies which would have preserved the original coved plaster ceiling's shape. And I was to design the entirety of the sound systems based on the audio circuits that I was designing for an esoteric speaker company at the time.
As a business owner and tenant in the building, I had an arrangement with the building owner in which I was given free reign of the theater in order to keep it dry and the deterioration in check. It was all about stabilizing it for the future and for a number of years we were successful. I spent many an hour from 1996 thru 2005 battling roof leaks (with a steady supply of roof cement from the owner), crawling through pipe chases and drawing up plans. I have to say that I enjoyed it, for a love of the building and its promise for the future. The interior is terrific, flexible, adaptable, largely ADA compliant, and with acoustics the best of anyplace in NE Ohio except for maybe Severance (I'm not exaggerating).
Speaking for my own and my brother's involvement, I can say that considerable money was spent on legal fees, appraisers, etc. let alone all the effort bringing together materials and labor budgets, and the actual plans for the programming/uses for the theater both short and long term. We had informal commitments of technical support from the Cleveland Restoration Society and the state preservation office regarding any and all incentives available and review of the project vis-a-vis Article 32 of Ohio's revised code with regard to rehab of historic structures. I met with esteemed members of CSU's College of Urban Affairs to determine how they could provide technical assistance through the city of Lakewood in creating a Business Investment District that would loosely encompass the Hilliard triangle and a short distance east and west on Madison in order to address the parking issues. We felt pursuing the building and then dealing with the parking issues in the long term was worthwhile since the compelling characteristics of that theater are so great.
There is, in fact, a fair amount of parking available if you could come to agreements with places like the northland plaza and others east and west of the triangle for off-hours use for parking. Additionally, a couple of buildings that would have been available for demolition across the street on Hilliard could have helped alleviate the short term parking problem. The long term parking plans, of course, involved the Silver Coast apartments, demolishing the east building first and the west building several years later. Theater rehab itself was to be under non-profit status (as they all seem to be) and was to form an anchor, a western terminus of a Madison business and arts district. The urban design involved the long term relocation of the gas station on the west point of the Hilliard Madison triangle because of the somewhat monumental potential for that spot, given the way traffic flows toward it from the east on both Madison and Hilliard, drawing the eye up to, well, a gas station. (We've managed to monumentalize the trivial with that gas station there) The long term plan sought to do something about that.
This was all a part of our proposal but it became clear that none of the gate-keepers at city hall or other noteworthy Lakewood institutions really cared or even understood the significance of our proposal and our plan's long term ramifications for the city. So nothing ever came of it. As far as city hall goes, I will also say that I dealt with no fewer than three distinctly different planning directors (one of which was interim but the most engaged), and that the detailed and comprehensive plan (including model theater plans from others across the country) presented to the city in 2003-4 disappeared from the public's access.
To say that my experience was demoralizing is an understatement. A little bit of me died with those plans, and I think a little bit of hope for Lakewood's future went with it. Here's why. Lakewood is vulnerable to the steady outmigration of people further and further into the hinterlands from the urban center. This is the "physics" of American cities and you better have a very good hand as a city or inner ring suburb to survive. And Lakewood has a half way decent hand. It's just that there seems to be a sad paradox of life at work here, which is that so many of those who have a need to hold power or purse strings in a community are also paralyzed by a breathtaking lack of vision. You can't fast food or convenience store a community into a destination for new residents or others. Honestly, I think some of them would rather woo an Appleby's than understand that an independent like, say, Deagan's is a better fit for Lakewood.
[How does anyone think W. 65th and Detroit would be doing right now if 15 years ago they leveled Gordon Square, the CPT building, the Capitol, and all the buildings around there and put up a Taco Bell, Rite Aid, Dairy Mart, KFC and a 7-Eleven for good measure? Hey, those would have been no-brainers! They would bring in short term commerce, not like those risky pie in the sky things those artsy folks talk about. And what the heck would anyone do with an abandoned screw factory of all things? But I digress.]
So one by one the unique and individualistic structures that distinguish Lakewood from its neighbors and region are being swept away in favor of those that commodify its character. Swept away with them are the hopes that architectural treasures will bolster it's culture for the future. Swept away with them are reasons for making Lakewood a destination in one's travels. Swept away with them are the very things that Lakewood should instead be leveraging in its battle against the devastating effects of urban sprawl.
I would say that all of us who have put effort into that theater, the motivation was the hope that the up coming generation of younger people would appreciate the qualities that that kind of venue presents and that our generation would step forward to first mothball it and them bring it back to life for them, and their children. Informal responses to the theater's interior spaces support this hope.
I can't speak for the owner of the building, but I think it fair to say that 1) a significant number of prospective willing and able tenants or purchasers expressed real interest in rehab or adaptive reuse, and 2) all of them (us) became frustrated with the intransigence of the Lakewood institutions involved.
For closers, I like this post on James Howard Kunstler's blog http://www.kunstler.com/eyesore.html and noting the Law of Perverse Outcomes, "People get what they deserve, not what they expect." We thought Lakewood deserved something great.
As it happens, I have had an intimate relationship with the Hilliard theater building. The owner is a friend of mine and at one time my brother and I were in a purchase agreement with him to buy it.
My brother's angle was to use it in part as a summer workshop space in association with New York's New School and Actor's Studio. At the time, he was associated with Parsons School of Design and an award-winning tv broadcast designer. With it would have come all manner of digital video equipment under an educationally subsidized program and the resultant seasonal influx of creative college students. In essence, the space would be rehabbed as a soundstage and recording venue first and a public performance venue second. This was to facilitate the rehab and to get around parking problems in the short term. The plan called for an increase in public performances over time as the project developed.
My angle on it was to be as project manager and historic preservation liaison with local preservation and national theater preservation communities, and to facilitate the formation of a 501c-3 and its board. I had even designed new HVAC systems in advance and planned roof repair strategies which would have preserved the original coved plaster ceiling's shape. And I was to design the entirety of the sound systems based on the audio circuits that I was designing for an esoteric speaker company at the time.
As a business owner and tenant in the building, I had an arrangement with the building owner in which I was given free reign of the theater in order to keep it dry and the deterioration in check. It was all about stabilizing it for the future and for a number of years we were successful. I spent many an hour from 1996 thru 2005 battling roof leaks (with a steady supply of roof cement from the owner), crawling through pipe chases and drawing up plans. I have to say that I enjoyed it, for a love of the building and its promise for the future. The interior is terrific, flexible, adaptable, largely ADA compliant, and with acoustics the best of anyplace in NE Ohio except for maybe Severance (I'm not exaggerating).
Speaking for my own and my brother's involvement, I can say that considerable money was spent on legal fees, appraisers, etc. let alone all the effort bringing together materials and labor budgets, and the actual plans for the programming/uses for the theater both short and long term. We had informal commitments of technical support from the Cleveland Restoration Society and the state preservation office regarding any and all incentives available and review of the project vis-a-vis Article 32 of Ohio's revised code with regard to rehab of historic structures. I met with esteemed members of CSU's College of Urban Affairs to determine how they could provide technical assistance through the city of Lakewood in creating a Business Investment District that would loosely encompass the Hilliard triangle and a short distance east and west on Madison in order to address the parking issues. We felt pursuing the building and then dealing with the parking issues in the long term was worthwhile since the compelling characteristics of that theater are so great.
There is, in fact, a fair amount of parking available if you could come to agreements with places like the northland plaza and others east and west of the triangle for off-hours use for parking. Additionally, a couple of buildings that would have been available for demolition across the street on Hilliard could have helped alleviate the short term parking problem. The long term parking plans, of course, involved the Silver Coast apartments, demolishing the east building first and the west building several years later. Theater rehab itself was to be under non-profit status (as they all seem to be) and was to form an anchor, a western terminus of a Madison business and arts district. The urban design involved the long term relocation of the gas station on the west point of the Hilliard Madison triangle because of the somewhat monumental potential for that spot, given the way traffic flows toward it from the east on both Madison and Hilliard, drawing the eye up to, well, a gas station. (We've managed to monumentalize the trivial with that gas station there) The long term plan sought to do something about that.
This was all a part of our proposal but it became clear that none of the gate-keepers at city hall or other noteworthy Lakewood institutions really cared or even understood the significance of our proposal and our plan's long term ramifications for the city. So nothing ever came of it. As far as city hall goes, I will also say that I dealt with no fewer than three distinctly different planning directors (one of which was interim but the most engaged), and that the detailed and comprehensive plan (including model theater plans from others across the country) presented to the city in 2003-4 disappeared from the public's access.
To say that my experience was demoralizing is an understatement. A little bit of me died with those plans, and I think a little bit of hope for Lakewood's future went with it. Here's why. Lakewood is vulnerable to the steady outmigration of people further and further into the hinterlands from the urban center. This is the "physics" of American cities and you better have a very good hand as a city or inner ring suburb to survive. And Lakewood has a half way decent hand. It's just that there seems to be a sad paradox of life at work here, which is that so many of those who have a need to hold power or purse strings in a community are also paralyzed by a breathtaking lack of vision. You can't fast food or convenience store a community into a destination for new residents or others. Honestly, I think some of them would rather woo an Appleby's than understand that an independent like, say, Deagan's is a better fit for Lakewood.
[How does anyone think W. 65th and Detroit would be doing right now if 15 years ago they leveled Gordon Square, the CPT building, the Capitol, and all the buildings around there and put up a Taco Bell, Rite Aid, Dairy Mart, KFC and a 7-Eleven for good measure? Hey, those would have been no-brainers! They would bring in short term commerce, not like those risky pie in the sky things those artsy folks talk about. And what the heck would anyone do with an abandoned screw factory of all things? But I digress.]
So one by one the unique and individualistic structures that distinguish Lakewood from its neighbors and region are being swept away in favor of those that commodify its character. Swept away with them are the hopes that architectural treasures will bolster it's culture for the future. Swept away with them are reasons for making Lakewood a destination in one's travels. Swept away with them are the very things that Lakewood should instead be leveraging in its battle against the devastating effects of urban sprawl.
I would say that all of us who have put effort into that theater, the motivation was the hope that the up coming generation of younger people would appreciate the qualities that that kind of venue presents and that our generation would step forward to first mothball it and them bring it back to life for them, and their children. Informal responses to the theater's interior spaces support this hope.
I can't speak for the owner of the building, but I think it fair to say that 1) a significant number of prospective willing and able tenants or purchasers expressed real interest in rehab or adaptive reuse, and 2) all of them (us) became frustrated with the intransigence of the Lakewood institutions involved.
For closers, I like this post on James Howard Kunstler's blog http://www.kunstler.com/eyesore.html and noting the Law of Perverse Outcomes, "People get what they deserve, not what they expect." We thought Lakewood deserved something great.
