Fairmount Bar Owner Narrowly Missed Being Crushed by Facade Collapse in Cleveland Heights

The aftermath of the facade collapse in Cleveland Heights Credit: Jacob Orosz

Authorities in Cleveland Heights were relieved this weekend to report that there were no injuries from massive facade collapse at the Cedar-Fairmount building at 3 a.m. early Sunday morning.

It’s easy to shudder at what could have been if the hundreds of pounds of stone and cornice fell to the sidewalk on a busy Sunday morning during breakfast or during the recent Cedar-Fairmount Summer Festival instead of the wee hours of the night.

That hour does see some regular traffic, however, including workers departing the Fairmount Cocktail Bar, including owner Jacob Orosz, who escaped tragedy by the slimmest of margins.

“I had actually left and only came back because I left my phone charger in the office,” he told Scene. “So I looped around and that’s where you see in the video I posted that I walked in at 2:57 a.m. It came down at 3:02.”

And a quick errand that should have only taken a minute or two, which would have placed him exiting the front door just moments later and around the time of the collapse, got extended when he paused in the main bar area to talk to a bartender who was still cleaning up and closing up at the end of the night.

“I missed it on the front and back end,” he said.

The Cleveland Heights fire department and a structural engineer with the city are still investigating the cause of the collapse, which Orosz said was even worse in real life than pictures and video show.

“Some of the pieces were human-sized,” he said, noting that it felt like a scene from The Avengers but very real. “The photos that look the worse? Those are the most accurate.”

The building, which was built in 1911, has been deemed structurally safe and the Fairmount, along with Barrio and Luna, are open for business after the mess was swiftly cleaned up by the city on Sunday.

More photos of the aftermath below.