The Agora is going through a change. My brother-in-law, Jae Stulock, owns and is head chef at a new restaurant there called The Hipp. He has also been running a food truck around Cle for the last couple years called Umami Moto (a big green truck serving awesome asian-thai type food. Any of you seen it around town???
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A Cleveland rock icon has changed hands, in a deal that promises to preserve the struggling Agora Theatre and office complex on Euclid Avenue. Late last month, the LoConti family quietly donated the Agora complex to MidTown Cleveland Inc., a neighborhood nonprofit that plans to move its offices there. MidTown executives see reviving the Agora as key to improving East 55th Street and Euclid, a dingy intersection in the center of the city's emerging health and technology corridor.
The Agora complex is part of a potential 5-acre redevelopment site, extending from the theater to East 55th and from Euclid to Prospect Avenue.
Public records show that Henry LoConti, Joseph A. LoConti and Joseph E. LoConti transferred the Agora, at 5000 Euclid Ave., to MidTown on Dec. 29. The LoContis still own parking east of the theater, and other property owners control the former Long Painting Co. building on Prospect and a gas station at East 55th.
MidTown and Hemingway Development, a private developer with several projects nearby, plan to remake the Agora office complex to house small, tech-focused tenants. And the public-private partnership hopes to spruce up the theater, a nearly 100-year-old venue that needs significant renovations to compete for concerts and events.
"Watching it starting to die, which it actually was doing here, I guess helped motivate me to do something," said Henry "Hank" LoConti, 82, who opened the Agora nightclub near Case Western Reserve University in 1966. "The only thing that I could think to do was to bring somebody on board who wanted to develop this area anyway. And that was MidTown Cleveland.
"For some reason, I could just never get it kick-started financially. Now what we've done will give it the shot that it needs."
A private appraisal placed the property's value at just over $6 million. MidTown will lease the buildings to a partnership between MidTown and Hemingway, a division of the Geis Cos. of Streetsboro. Getting the property for free will allow the partners to put more money into the complex, starting with a $2.5 million to $3.5 million investment in the four-story office building just west of the theater.
"This is not a 10-year redevelopment plan," said Jim Haviland, MidTown's executive director. "This, to me, is a 5-year plan, with significant work happening in the first two years." MidTown expects to move its offices into an old bank space on Euclid Avenue in June.
Those offices will include a leasing and information center dedicated to the Health-Tech Corridor, a 3-mile stretch between University Circle and downtown Cleveland.
Public officials and private institutions are trying to channel biomedical and healthcare-related growth into the 1,600-acrea area, in hopes of adding jobs and reviving vacant buildings and land. Developer Fred Geis, a Hemingway principal, will gut the second and third floors of the 54,000-square-foot Agora office complex. The few existing tenants will move to the fourth floor. Geis expects to rent space at $8 per square foot, catering to small, creative companies - a different audience than the health- and bioscience-focused tenants at his MidTown Tech Park and 7000 Euclid building.
"This is really one of those projects you do a lot more from the heart than you do from the brain," said Geis, a longtime Agora patron who saw metal band Mushroomhead perform there in October. "This is never going to be a big money-maker for us."
Originally called the Metropolitan Theater, the building opened as an opera house in 1913 and later became the WHK radio station auditorium. The LoContis moved the Agora club there in 1985, after more than 15 years near Cleveland State University.
But the neighborhood was depleted and rough. And the Agora increasingly faced competition from other venues and nationwide entertainment companies that control where big acts land. From 200 shows a year, the Agora is down to 75 to 80 events annually - and most of those are on the smaller stage.
Under an agreement with MidTown, Henry LoConti will continue to run the theater, potentially adding more weddings and corporate events.
Geis said improvements to the theater, including reopening the doors on Euclid Avenue, adding air conditioning and replacing the main floor, might cost $2 million. A full historic renovation could cost $7.5 million - a formidable project, and one that nobody's committing to now. Prospects for a larger commercial development are more hazy.
MidTown is two months into a transportation and planning study focused on the East 55th and Euclid area, which the nonprofit has renamed Penn Square.
The process will give neighborhood leaders a better sense of potential uses for nearby land. And the study, to be finished in April, might help MidTown better solicit public money to fix up the railroad bridge that slices across the intersection, create public spaces and accommodate buses and bicycles.
"It's one of the most challenging pieces of real estate I've ever dealt with," architect Paul Volpe, who is conducting the study, said of the intersection.
Reviving the Agora office building, now called the Offices at Penn Square, and creating activity on Euclid Avenue is the first step, Haviland said.
In November, the owners of Cleveland's Umami Moto food truck opened a prep kitchen in a former restaurant at the Agora. Jae Stulock and Sandy Madachik hope to open their own restaurant, named The Hipp in a nod to one of the theater's past names, by early February.
Existing businesses and neighbors are thrilled at the prospect of more bustle.
Mike Brown, owner of Lava Room Recording, moved to the Agora complex three years ago. Artists including Michael Bolton, Keyshia Cole and R. Kelly have stopped through Brown's recording studio recently, but the flow of concerts at the Agora and traffic in the building has been slow. Now he sees opportunities to work with other creative companies and provide audio services to tech-focused tenants.
"It's cleaning up another area along Euclid Avenue," said Gordon Priemer, who manages and leases two nearby office buildings. "It's redeveloping along the HealthLine (bus line). It's everything that we've talked about for a long time."
I would also really like to see talented chefs from Cleveland (Jonathon Sawyer, Rocco Whelan of Fehrenheit) be given a shot at some prime real estate for a second location. That is something San Francisco did in their Ferry Building. They found great restaurants throughout the suburbs or out of the way neighborhoods and gave them a great deal on starting franchising close to each other in a destination location.
