The 9 Cleveland
The 9 Cleveland is a residential and commercial complex located in Downtown Cleveland, Ohio, United States, at the corner of East Ninth Street and Euclid Avenue. It includes three buildings, the largest of which is a 29-story, tower commonly known by its previous name of Ameritrust Tower and formerly known as the Cleveland Trust Tower. The tower was completed in 1971 and is an example of brutalist architecture, the only high-rise building designed by Marcel Breuer and Hamilton Smith. The complex also includes the adjacent Cleveland Trust Company Building, completed in 1908, and the Swetland Building. Although plans called for a second mirror-image tower, the second building was never constructed. The Breuer tower initially served as headquarters for Ameritrust Bank before its merger with Society Bank. Society Bank has since merged with KeyBank. The tower was vacant from 1996 until September 2014, before it was converted to apartments and a hotel as part of a larger project involving the other buildings in the complex. The space also includes a wine cellar and restaurant. The rotunda was renovated and reopened as a Heinen's Fine Foods grocery store in 2015 and the Swetland Building was restored for residential use. Ameritrust Tower 1991 proposal In 1990, developer Richard Jacobs proposed constructing a new tower for the AmeriTrust Corporation on Cleveland's Public Square. About $500 million was budgeted for the project. The Architectural firm of Kohn Pedersen Fox or KPF of New York City would have designed the new AmeriTrust Tower. Coincidentally, KPF would have designed the new Cuyahoga County Administration Building which was planned in the late 2000s to replace the Ameritrust Tower (built in 1971). In 1992, Ameritrust merged with Society Bank (now KeyBank), obviating the need for the Ameritrust Tower. Had the Ameritrust Tower been built, it was planned to be 61 stories, 920 feet tall to the roof, and have a curved glass curtain wall, a Hyatt Hotel, and high-end shopping including Giorgio Armani and Versace as anchor tenants. 2005 purchase In 2005, Cuyahoga County purchased the tower, the historic Cleveland Trust Company rotunda, and several other surrounding structures from the Jacobs Group for use as the site for a new county headquarters. This was done after a study completed by Weber Murphy Fox and Orfield Laboratories, had concluded that the building was a very high quality for office occupancy, when compared with the Hudson Department Store building, which the County was considering for office occupancy. On March 29, 2007, the Cuyahoga County Commissioners voted to demolish the tower and to replace it with a new building to be designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox. Two commissioners, James "Jimmy" Dimora and Timothy Hagan, wanted to demolish the tower, while commissioner Peter Lawson-Jones supported renovation. The Cleveland Planning Commission approved demolition of the landmark Ameritrust Tower, to the chagrin of preservationists, who argued that the county would destroy a valued piece of architecture. A June 2008 Cleveland Magazine article said that the county's own consultants told commissioners that it would be cheaper