Believing in Cleveland (Urban Life, Landscape and Policy) by J. Mark Souther

Author:J. Mark Souther [Souther, J. Mark]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Temple University Press
Published: 2017-11-03T00:00:00+00:00

The Cleveland Foundation’s Gradual Embrace of Playhouse Square

The Halprin plan certainly appeared capable of creating a unified, appealing downtown. Perhaps because Halprin so skillfully wove together many varied projects with committed advocates and gave attention to the entire corridor between Public Square and Playhouse Square, his plan and the organization charged with carrying it out could take credit for individual successes while remaining aloof from initiatives that did not succeed. For example, the Garden Club of Cleveland, headed by the Plain Dealer publisher-editor’s wife, Iris Vail, adopted the enhancement of Public Square as a cause. Piggybacking on the approaching U.S. bicentennial, the Garden Club held a patriotically themed benefit ball at the Arcade in 1975, netting $175,000 that seeded a less-ambitious plan than Halprin’s for revamping Public Square.56 Likewise, although the Playhouse Square revitalization campaign predated Halprin’s arrival by a few years, its chief advocates, including members of the Junior League, were among the short list of leaders to whom Halprin was introduced in 1973, and he continued to cultivate them during the workshop process. The inclusion of Hadden as a cochair of DCC’s Playhouse Square committee and of Shepardson and other dedicated backers of the theater district revival as committee members was an acknowledgment of the promise of that effort, a way of claiming a connection to it, and an attempt to pull what had started as a grassroots movement into the orbit of the growth coalition.57

As the Cleveland Foundation situated itself more openly and directly within the growth coalition through its sponsorship of Halprin’s plan, its leaders also warmed to the idea of embracing Playhouse Square, but they did so on their own terms. Shepardson’s Playhouse Square Cabaret shows—especially Jacques Brel, which closed in the summer of 1975 after a remarkable 522 performances that grossed more than $1.5 million from more than 135,000 attendees—had proven that suburbanites would spend an evening downtown if given something fun to do. Yet these shows did little to move the needle in terms of generating the necessary funding to undertake the kind of transformational redevelopment that an increasing number of observers expected and that a much-maligned city seemed to require for improving its image. Even after the commencement of Junior League backing, Shepardson remained accustomed to doing little better than breaking even. Sometimes the only profits his shows netted came from the sale of popcorn, liquor, and concessions. Cleveland Foundation executive director Homer Wadsworth later characterized Playhouse Square’s backers somewhat dismissively as “a bit naïve” and their efforts as resembling “cocktail party planning.”58

More than simply a concern about the lack of a solid business footing gave pause to the foundation. There was, Hadden noted, a desire to see something approximating Ghirardelli Square or Boston’s soon-to-open Faneuil Hall Marketplace, which was garnering considerable national attention as a new model for downtown renewal. It is worth recalling that, as late as 1975, Strawbridge’s Settlers’ Landing project in the Flats, with its location near Higbee’s and the planned Tower City Center, still looked more likely to anchor a strong shopping, dining, and entertainment concentration than Playhouse Square.

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