Mark Oprea
The Arcade could become the host to the Cleveland Cultural Center, a conglomeration of ethnic museums and restaurants.
A recent plan asks the question: What if we assembled all of these cultural collections into one place.
And have that place be none other than the Downtown Arcade.
It's the dream of a conceptual plan drafted up lately by Sandvick Architects, the firm that spearheaded the Arcade's $60 million renovation in 1999, and former head of the Gateway District Neighborhood Corporation Tom Yablonsky. The team's nearly-completed pitch to Arcade owners Skyline Investments is a two-birds-one-stone deal: fill the nearly 60% empty building with a cosmopolitan spin.
That is, as recent plans show, a so-called Cleveland Cultural Center. Occupying the currently vacant 18 spaces on the Euclid and Superior levels would be an opportunity for a specific ethnic group to rep its traditions—via a bite-size museum, walls of video, through lectures and music, or selling wares.
Or food. Five of the empty kitchen stalls would be occupied by culinary legs of these cultural groups.
Yablonsky, currently a consultant for a number of downtown development projects, believes that clustering dozens of different culturally focused outposts in a building that—architecturally speaking—is already a cultural melange could boost the Arcade's vibrancy beyond weekend weddings, lunchtime loungers and hotel guests at the upstairs Hyatt Regency. (Sandvick and Skyline Investments did not respond to calls for comment in time.)
And take influence from arguably the Arcade's best pasttime: hosting thousands during the St. Patrick's Day Parade in March. "Imagine experiencing a Kenyan Mombasa carnival," the plans read, "or Chinese New Year in the splendor of the Arcade!"
That vibrancy "could be greater if we created an atmosphere," Yablonsky told Scene. "And a vibrancy that you don't feel in the inside right now. It's intuitive."
"But it'll give us so much atmosphere that you'll be able to quantify over time," he added, "that the hotel's operational side and sense of place and purpose would be grandly improved."
Since the 1990s, when the Arcade's previous owners, along with the city and the county, bankrolled that eight-figure investment into the building's revival, the Arcade has always suffered a certain beauty paradox: How can a space of such a resounding aesthetic, with its Romanesque facades and 300-foot-long skylight, be so empty most of the time?
Apparently, Indianapolis had a similar conundrum. As Yablonsky and Sandvick cite in their plans, the city was brainstorming ideas of how to revamp their recession-struck Lafayette Square. That cosmopolitan notion hit: the square would be renamed the International Marketplace.
But there's a clear difference here. Indianapolis' Marketplace is a 2.5-square-mile area, pockmarked with some 900 ethnic businesses, including, a recent brochure suggests, "over 50" markets and 115 restaurants. According to the Sandvick idea, the Arcade would essentially be an indoor version of Cleveland's Cultural Gardens. Not a massive ethnic food hall.
"I think it might be good for families," said Bradley Spirakus, 36, drinking coffee with his coworkers at a table on the Arcade's second floor. "But for thirty-year-olds, there's nothing in here for any of us. Maybe make it more hip and meaningful—maybe a lounge-type thing. And make it more family-oriented."
"Nobody's coming in here from the 'burbs," his coworker Michael Dimarino, 40, said. "I mean, half of the restaurants are closed. What's the point?"
Others pointed at the Arcade's prime revenue source (along with the Hyatt guests) in the past decade.
"That's my biggest question: Where will all the weddings go?" Taylor Baker said, eating lunch nearby. "I suppose you just keep them on the weekends?"
"Maybe you keep weddings on the weekends, and do the cultural thing on the weekdays," her friend McKenna Donahue added.
Baker closed her Styrofoam container of finished noodles from Zen Cuisine, a rare food stall still operating. "And what's gonna happen to my favorite lunch spot? Really!"
Yablonsky said that he and Julie Dornback, the lead architect on the Cultural Center plans, will be presenting a final version of the concept to Skyline in June, and ideally begin the implementation—and seek confirmed tenants—by the end of the year.
As for any doubts, Yablonsky turned to his years convincing doubtful investors that the Warehouse District could be reshaped into Downtown's most populated neighborhood. He sees the same for the Arcade: a space ready to host a concept not yet tried in Cleveland's limits.
"It's a glass half full, half empty discussion," he said. "You have to have a vision, you have to feel positive while you're trying to implement. You got to believe in it. You could quickly find reasons not to go forward, and then you won't ever do the right thing."
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