Dick Pace has backed away from a deal to renovate 6611 Euclid Ave. as a business incubator. The Dunham Tavern wants to raze the building for a park.
View full sizeA view of the Euclid Avenue portion of Cleveland's Health-Tech corridor, looking west toward downtown from the area near the Cleveland Clinic. Developer Dick Pace has dropped plans to buy and redevelop one of the corridor's most blighted buildings. The Dunham Tavern museum wants to demolish the building, a vacant, seven-story structure at 6611 Euclid Ave.CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A private developer has dropped plans to turn a blighted building into a business incubator in Cleveland's health and technology corridor.
In December, Dick Pace inked a deal to buy the vacant, seven-story building at 6611 Euclid Ave. from the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority.
Now he's walked away from a purchase agreement with RTA, and a small museum hopes to buy the property and raze the building.
"I'm definitely stepping away from it," said Pace, the president of Cumberland Development LLC. He would not discuss the reason for his decision.
But leaders of the Dunham Tavern Museum, a historic house, barn and garden west of the 6611 Euclid building, have had designs on the land for years. William Ruper, president of the museum's board of trustees, has described the building - the tallest in the area - as "overpowering" and a "monstrosity."
On Friday, Ruper said the museum hopes to buy and demolish the building, for a 2.2-acre park.
"Dick had said all along that he would step aside if we had the capabilities of purchasing the property and getting the building torn down," he said. "I think he's doing it for the greater good of the community and realizes that there can be a lot more development surrounding a park."
The purchase would reunite the original frontage of a 13.75 acre property that Rufus and Jane Pratt Dunham bought in the early 1800s. Ruper said the museum has taken out a loan to buy and demolish the building.
But the Dunham Tavern does not have a deal with RTA, which might need approval from the Federal Transit Administration. The transit agency bought the site, which then included three buildings, to stage construction materials and use some land for the federally funded Euclid Corridor transportation project.
"We are meeting with all stakeholders next week to discuss this property in detail," Mary McCahon, an RTA spokeswoman, wrote in an email. "We continue to be very interested in selling this property."
The agency, which paid $1.1 million for the property, agreed to sell it to Cumberland for $500,000 - a price motivated, in part, by the prospect of bringing more businesses and public-transit users to the neighborhood through Pace's $15 million project.
Ruper believes a park can be a growth engine, too.
"RTA, I think, has got to come around to the realization that selling the property to us is in their best interest and in the best interest of Midtown and in the best interest of the city - far more than selling the parcel to a private developer," he said.
Other investors in the neighborhood don't care whether the building is demolished or renovated. They just don't want it sitting there, vacant, with blown-out windows - an eyesore in an area recasting itself as Cleveland's Health-Tech Corridor.
"The million-dollar question is 'What happens now?'" said Jim Haviland, executive director of MidTown Cleveland Inc., a neighborhood nonprofit group that has worked with Pace and the Dunham Tavern.
"Ultimately, that building has to be addressed. And everybody agrees."
Follow me on Twitter: @mjarboe