620 Prospect Ave. — Approximate Site of Proposed Garage Demolition
Bedrock wants to build an eight-story, 550-space parking garage in Cleveland’s Gateway District, wrapped in more than 135,000 decorative tiles and with ground-floor retail or office space. The project, which would rise between Prospect Avenue and Huron Road just north of Rocket Arena, is still working its way through city review, and it comes with a complication: a two-story building tied to a once-beloved jazz and blues club would have to come down first.
A Garage Dressed Up as Public Art
According to News 5 Cleveland, the garage’s facade would be screened with more than 135,000 tiles designed to shift in the wind, concealing parking on the second through eighth floors while the entire first floor is reserved for commercial space — retail, offices, or some mix of both — totaling 20,000 to 22,000 square feet. Bedrock has said that footprint would be large enough to accommodate some grocers, though no tenant has been named. The developer plans to work with the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland to solicit tile design proposals from five Ohio-based artists, whose work would customize the wall tiles’ colors and patterns to create a pixelated mural effect, per the same report. Early renderings also show video boards planned for the garage’s west side and along street-facing stairwells and elevator shafts.
The Cleveland City Design Review Committee gave the garage proposal an initial recommendation with caveats, and the project still requires further public review before construction can begin, including multiple planning commission approvals and review by the Cleveland Board of Zoning Appeals. The garage’s current design does not yet meet all city requirements for new downtown parking structures, the outlet reported. Committee members generally praised the garage’s artistic concept even as they flagged those outstanding issues.
A Jazz Club’s Last Stand
The sticking point is demolition. News 5 Cleveland reported that Bedrock’s garage plans call for tearing down the two-story building at 620 Prospect Avenue, a structure built in the early 1900s that most recently housed Mr. Albert’s Men’s World; the Loop Lounge, a jazz and blues club, operated there in the 1940s and 1950s and once hosted performers including Dizzy Gillespie, Billie Holiday and Dinah Washington. Cleveland Magazine, however, described the building slated for demolition as a 120-year-old structure at 618 Prospect that had recently housed Mister Albert’s Men’s World…