Last Look? Deconstruction Looms for Fifth Church, on Cleveland's West Side

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By Michelle Jarboe McFee, The Plain Dealer

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- After a series of false starts and shelved plans, the city of Cleveland could begin dismantling a long-vacant West Side landmark this year.

A retail developer and a townhouse builder aim to start construction next spring, if not sooner, on the block bounded by Clifton Boulevard, Lake Avenue and West 116th and West 117th streets.

But first, the city of Cleveland has to take apart the iconic Fifth Church of Christ Scientist, which has occupied the northwest corner of that block since 1926 and has languished, empty, for more than two decades. The questions, at this point, are how much of the church can be saved; at what cost; and who is paying the bill.

City officials are reluctant to put a firm timeline on their demolition and salvage schedule. The neighborhood has seen many proposals emerge and expire since Fifth Church's congregation fled to the suburbs in the late 1980s. Councilman Matt Zone, who represents the area near the Cleveland-Lakewood border, is a bit more loquacious about the public-sector's plan.

"I am hopeful that, in the next 30 to 60 days, we can begin the deconstruction of the church," Zone said this week. "I'm the politician. I'm always optimistic."

Cleveland is working with a consultant, WR Restoration of Twinsburg, to evaluate the church and determine what materials can be saved. That analysis will provide a menu of potential costs for the city and the future site developers. Disassembling the church, rather than simply tearing it down, would be an unusual – and expensive – proposition.

Collecting fallen stones and pulling off decorative elements might be easy and cheap. But dismantling the church's front door, its portico, and rebuilding that entryway as the anchor to a park on the site could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

That's exactly what townhouse developer Brickhaus Partners proposed to do in 2014, when the city picked the company from a trio of competitors vying to redevelop the northernmost edge of the property. The rest of the block, largely cleared now, is earmarked for a small retail center anchored by a Lucky's Market grocer.

Cleveland's economic development department has set aside $250,000 for breaking down the church, which the city has owned for more than 10 years. That money includes roughly $85,000 for demolition. A small slice of the budget will cover historic documentation and photography of the building, which is a city landmark.

Once the cost estimates are in, the city and Brickhaus will have to determine what's possible and who's picking up any extra costs. The townhouse developer expects to construct 11 high-end homes, potentially starting in the high $300,000s, that would incorporate stone and other materials from the church into their facades. The small park would sit just west of the townhouses.

"I'm really waiting to see what the inventory looks like, because that will indicate which materials can most easily be saved," said developer Andrew Brickman of Brickhaus, which is working with Dimit Architects on the townhouse designs. "There's also a sense in the community that other people in the neighborhood might be interested in pieces of the church, as well."

The Cleveland Landmarks Commission, which signed off on the demolition last year, and the city have insisted on deconstruction at Lake and West 117th. That means WR Restoration could pull off wall panels, decorative spindles and railings, roof tiles and other pieces of the building to be reused on the townhouses or other projects. A demolition contractor will tear down what's left.

"It's my personal goal to get off as many of the significant architectural pieces as possible,"  said Jim Wamelink, a WR Restoration vice president who recalls working on only two other deconstruction jobs in his career. "This is what I live for. This is what my guys do."

Wamelink was part of a team that salvaged bits of the historic Church of the Transfiguration last year, when the Euclid Avenue building was razed to make way for a Holiday Inn hotel serving the Cleveland Clinic.

At the behest of the landmarks commission, which has some control over historic buildings in the city, the Episcopal Diocese of Ohio committed to removing and preserving a section of the church's facade. After demolition, the diocese sold the cleared land to the Clinic.

The preservation work at Transfiguration, a Gothic Revival building, was much simpler than it could be at Fifth Church. The salvaged section of the facade basically could be stripped off without causing structural problems. That job didn't require a crane or an elaborate framework designed to shift weight to the church's foundation. Wamelink said the Transfiguration job ran between $65,000 and $75,000, including excavation of the church's cornerstone and a time capsule.

The facade, which was numbered and crated, is sitting in a warehouse on the city's East Side. "We've had ongoing conversations with a prominent candidate that is hoping to reuse the facade by rebuilding it in another public location" in the city, said Rick Foran, a developer who acted as project manager for the Episcopal Diocese on the deconstruction and demolition.

Foran estimates that recreating that facade could cost $100,000 to $200,000, since the pieces will need to be attached to a new foundation and backing.

"The component we took from the Transfiguration church was freestanding and could be readily catalogued and numbered and stored," Foran said. "As it relates to the portico [at Fifth Church], that's a very complex engineering component. To do something like that is much more ambitious. ... The thing about a vaulted portico like that is that you take one piece out of it, and the rest will collapse."

The domed sanctuary of Fifth Church was stripped long ago. A few rows of seats, sprouting mold, still line the walls. Crushed beer cans, malt-liquor bottles and the occasional dessicated bird litter the main floor and stairwells. The basement is dark and dank, with once-plush carpet that shifts unsettlingly underfoot. Shattered glass glitters and occasional graffiti tags appear in the dim beam cast by a flashlight.

If there were artifacts worth saving, they disappeared long ago. The lingering value here lies in the blocks of buff Berea sandstone and the slabs of limestone and marble that haven't been stolen or broken.

Charles Slife, who works on regional development projects at Cleveland City Hall, said the city hopes to see crews on the church site by the end of this year. The city is still negotiating a complicated land-swap and –sale deal that involves Brickhaus and Carnegie Cos., the retail developer that owns much of the block.

Wamelink's team typically focuses on restoration. Dismantling a building, and parceling out the pieces for use in other projects, isn't the same thing. But it's far better, and much rarer, Wamelink said, than consigning a piece of history to the trash heap.

"The goal is to try to extract as much historic architectural value out of it as possible," he said of Fifth Church. "And then it's up to the developer to use that."

View pictures of the project here.