The 80,000-square-foot brick former warehouse sits on West 25th Street between Seymour and Castle avenues, just south of I-90 and I-490 and on the edge of the Tremont and Clark-Fulton neighborhoods. The area for decades hasn’t been known for its prime real estate, a reputation complicated by the media circus of Ariel Castro’s arrest in 2013 for holding three women captive and abusing them for a decade.
Foran and his tenants, which includes an organization founded by one of Castro’s victims, want that to change.
“I see similar energy coming this way,” Foran said, comparing the area to neighborhoods such as Tremont, Ohio City and the Detroit Shoreway.
The Pivot Center for Art, Dance and Expression, a project Foran has worked on for five years, is inching toward completion. What was once a warehouse for an awning and sail-making company will soon be home to a consortium of artistic and social services nonprofits. It will feature a gallery space, a 4,200-square-foot black box theater, a radio station, classrooms and offices.
The Cleveland Rape Crisis Center was the first tenant to move in. Others, including the Inlet Dance Theatre, the LatinUS Theater, the ICA-Art Conservation and The Cleveland Family Center for Missing Children and Adults plan to soon follow.
By far the biggest tenant will be the Cleveland Museum of Art, which will use the space for many community-based programs, and storing and displaying floats and costumes used for its annual Parade the Circle event.
The building was in various stages of completion as of last week. Inlet Dance’s studio, built in a window-heavy wing, is nearly completed. ICA’s space on the second floor, is not. A series of windows facing West 25th Street which in keeping with the “Pivot” name will jut out at an angle, are still covered up as work continues.
The heads of some of the nonprofits spoke about their future, as they still need to raise the money to pay for certain work. Fundraising has become difficult in the past year because of the coronavirus pandemic, they said.
Still, the goal is clear. Foran and the tenants aim to create a welcoming space that allows like-minded organizations to collaborate with each other. Many portions of the building can also serve as a space for events, meetings and fundraisers.
“For me this is the main reason I want to be in that building,” Future Ink Graphics founding Director Stephanie Kluk said. The startup, which will work with graphic designers and silkscreen artists, will occupy a space on the first floor, right by the entrance.
Cleveland Rape Crisis Center CEO Sondra Miller said the ability for victims to maintain sense of anonymity when entering the building was important as the organization looked for a new location. Since the building houses so many organizations, nobody will necessarily associate a person walking through the doors with a sexual assault, she said.
Each of the diverse group of tenants had its own needs, which proved challenging for the designers and contractors who worked to preserve as much of the original building’s warehouse feel as possible.
“I have not worked on a project where there’s so many variables, and you’re trying to still move things forward (and) find the design opportunities … while trying to maintain something about the space that was in the original idea of the design,” designer Joe Smith of the New York architecture firm Smith & Sauer said. He likened the designing to an “exquisite corpse,” a term used to denote an artistic method where the ideas of many artists are rolled into one.
The building was constructed in 1919, with additions between 1920 and 1983. It was, for decades, the home of the Astrup Co., which made canvas sails for ships and later awnings used on homes and buildings.
Once family owned, the company was bought by Glen Raven Inc. and now goes by Trivantage. It now uses a distribution facility in Middleburg Heights and donated the West 25th Street building to the Western Reserve Land Conservancy to hold onto before Foran bought it in 2019 for $350,000.
The idea for the building went back to 2015. Foran, a longtime developer who said his only connection to the arts world was a membership to the Art Museum, was in the midst of developing what is now the West 25th Street Lofts in Ohio City when he started looking at creating a space for the arts and nonprofit world.
The project grew from there, into the $12.8 million investment it stands at today. The building is now on the National Register of Historic Places, which helped Foran finance the project because it qualified for state and federal historic tax credits, he said. The city of Cleveland also approved a special tax designation to help pay for project costs and awarded a Vacant Property Initiative loan.
The Art Museum, which leases a quarter of the space, declined to make an official available for an interview. Spokeswoman Caroline Guscott said in a statement that the museum continues to seek money to support the space.
It said its first exhibit there will focus on Parade the Circle.
“The spirit of Parade the Circle will be revealed throughout the center with puppets, costumes and masks in every corner, emphasizing the scale of objects, color, movement, and sounds,” Guscott said.
Most of the building will soon be leased. Foran said last week that he signed La Mega Media, a Hispanic media company that intends to use the space to broadcast on radio from the second floor. Councilwoman Jasmin Santana confirmed that her plan is to put an office in the third floor.
Miller also said she is in talks with Foran about her organization leasing more space on the third floor, after a funding cut forced the Cleveland Rape Crisis Center to give up their main office at the downtown Halle Building.
There is room to grow, too. Foran said he planned to add 16 apartments on the site of the current parking lot at West 25th Street and Castle Avenue. There is also a large plot of land on Seymour Avenue, which includes where Castro’s house once sat, owned by the Cuyahoga County Land Bank. Foran hopes that either he or, in working with the city, can use it for community activities.
Metro West Development Corp. Executive Director Ricardo Leon said he has been impressed with Foran’s work so far. He said Foran has been sensitive to the idea that any development that happens in that section of Clark-Fulton must be sensitive to the needs of the largely Hispanic community.
“Development is absolutely necessary for a neighborhood to thrive and evolve, but you have … to be more intentional to what we bring to the table to make sure there’s opportunity for many people,” Leon said.
Bill Wade, who founded Inlet Dance and heads it, said he plans to throw open the garage doors in the summer so residents can bike or walk by and see what their organization is all about.
Foran also had to be sensitive to The Pivot Center’s location. It is one plot of land away from where Castro held Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight captive for a decade.
The trio escaped in 2013. Castro hanged himself in prison a few months later and the city tore his house down.
The “Pivot” name can also be seen as a reference to the Castro legacy. While Foran doesn’t want to wash away the horrific crimes that happened on that street, he wants the neighborhood’s reputation to be so much more.
So does DeJesus, whose organization The Cleveland Family Center for Missing Children and Adults will be housed out of The Pivot Center. The organization is dedicated to helping the families of missing loved ones through the process of talking to law enforcement and publicizing their case. Their office will help families and give law enforcement a safe space to interview them.
DeJesus and her cousin Sylvia Colon said Foran reached out after DeJesus announced the organization’s formation during the Ohio Attorney General’s Law Enforcement Conference in October 2018. When the pair and DeJesus’ father visited the building, they didn’t know until they arrived how close it was to where the Castro house once stood.
While Colon strenuously objected, DeJesus did not. She thought it felt right.
“The main reason I wanted to do that and put it there is to bring something positive and help to the neighborhood,” she said in a brief interview Tuesday. “I don’t have a problem that our space is on West 25th. If I can be on that street so can everybody else.”
“He doubled our rent,” Colon joked.
Foran, 73, described himself as being in “the cocktail hour of my career.”
He said that as a developer, “I try to leave a trail of things I’m proud of and not just (make) a quick buck.
“When I’m finished, I want to be proud of something as I leave,” he said.
Foran has worked on other projects in neighborhoods right before they turned around. When he and a business partner bought a series of buildings on West 25th Street near Detroit Avenue in 2011, the area had not yet become the bustling enclave dense with housing that it is now. Those buildings became the 83-unit West 25th Street Lofts, which opened in 2016.
Santana, the councilwoman whose ward includes The Pivot Center, said in a text message that the project “is a sign that a once-distressed neighborhood is seeing a comeback.” Foran would certainly like to see that happen as well, and is optimistic.
“Some of the gaps are beginning to fill in,” Foran said of the near-West Side. “Is it overnight? No, but it’s it’s happening.”
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