The Plain Dealer | Steve Litt   |  July 02, 2014

Spaces unveils preliminary design for proposed new home in Ohio City's Hingetown

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A sheath of bright, chartreuse-colored aluminum panels would wrap the northwest corner of the proposed new home of Spaces gallery in a former industrial building in Ohio City, according to the latest renderings released by the cultural nonprofit.

While raising $1.5 million to make the gallery's relocation possible, the organization is also planning for renovations to its proposed new home in Ohio City's Hingetown neighborhood.

"It's just the first run at what a design would look like," John Farina, president of the Spaces board of trustees, said Wednesday.

Spaces hopes to sign a lease by October on the 14,000-square-foot building at 2885 Detroit Ave., owned by developer Michael Chesler.

A review of the design is on the agenda for Thursday's meeting of the Ohio City Design Review Committee at 11:45 a.m. at LAND Studio, 1939 West 25th St., Suite 200.

Spaces, founded in 1978 as a venue focusing on experimental projects by early- and mid-career artists, plans to move from its present home at 2220 Superior Viaduct on the uphill edge of the West Bank of the Flats, where it has struggled to maintain visibility in the shadow of the towering Stonebridge apartments.

In 2013, Spaces signed a deal to sell its late 19th-century loft building on the Viaduct for $418,000. It's now leasing space in the building.

Farina said the design for the new location, authored by Cleveland architect John Williams, is still evolving.

But it shows that the budding Ohio City cultural district ? dubbed Hingetown ? would acquire a splash of color and a sense of critical mass along Detroit Avenue at West 29th Street if Spaces can make its move.

The building eyed by Spaces as its new home is located on the southeast corner of that intersection, just a few steps from the former Bop Stop jazz club, recently donated to University Circle's Music Settlement, and ICA Art Conservation, both of which have frontage on Detroit.

At West 29th Street and Church Avenue, a short block south of Detroit, the new Spaces would form part of a cluster with the Transformer Station Gallery, catty corner across the intersection.

Graham Veysey and Marika Shioiri-Clark's Ohio City Firehouse, an office and retail center, and their Striebinger Block, an apartment and retail building, also face the intersection.

In April, Farina said that Spaces had launched a $3 million capital campaign to make the gallery's relocation possible.

In order to sign a lease with Chesler, he said, the gallery needs to raise at least half that amount, or $1.5 million. And of that amount, he said, the gallery has commitments for about $500,000, or one-third.

On Wednesday, Farina said the gallery is still steaming ahead with its capital campaign, but that he had no new commitments to announce.

"We're still moving through the very early parts of the campaign, the early parts of dealing with our higher-end donors and working on commitments and having meetings and doing what we need to do to secure those early large gifts," he said. "We've made some more progress, and we're ever closer to the initial goal we need to meet, so we feel comfortable moving forward with everything."

The plans articulated by Williams call for a nearly 5,200-square-foot main gallery, with 20-foot ceilings, plus a 410-square-foot video gallery, 1,600 square feet of artist's workshop space, and a 430-square-foot artist's studio.

The ground floor would also include office and meeting space. A second-floor mezzanine would be used for storage.

In all, the new building would have slightly more space than the 12,000 square feet Spaces previously used at Superior Viaduct, but most of the room would be on one floor, making it more flexible and useful, Farina said.

Williams said Wednesday in an interview that his design would generally meet the requirements of a new Pedestrian Retail Overlay zoning district established in the neighborhood, along with those of Ohio City Inc., the local community development corporation.

The overlay requires businesses to have entrances on Detroit Avenue. Because of its internal layout ? with offices along the north edge of the building on the Detroit Avenue side -- the new Spaces would need a variance to place its entrance just around the corner on West 29th Street, but Williams said he thinks Ohio City Inc. would support that proposal.

"They feel comfortable that even though it [the design] does not comply with exact specifications, it does comply with the intent," Williams said. "They were not too concerned about getting the variances, considering the age and use of the building for gallery space."

Williams said he chose bright chartreuse as the color for the proposed aluminum wrap on the building's corner because the color is part of the Spaces visual brand.

He said he'll design the panels to appear to float several inches off the brick fa

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