CLEVELAND, Ohio — Mayor Justin Bibb grabbed a celebratory cup at City Hall’s new first-floor coffee shop Monday, even as a debate brews over a plan that could eventually replace it with a larger cafe in the building’s basement.
Coffee has become a hot topic because of Bibb’s $7 million plan to renovate City Hall’s basement — sorry, “garden level,” as the city now refers to it — to create an open-concept public lobby, new restrooms, an ADA-accessible entrance and a new space for a coffee shop. So far, City Council has poured that plan over ice.
Dozens of city employees gathered Monday morning for the grand opening of 601 Coffee House, a small counter tucked into a space just outside the building’s grand rotunda in the Citizen Support Center, the room where residents come for birth and death certificates. The space, which used to be a snack shop, has been vacant since the COVID-19 pandemic…