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Work is underway to reconfigure what many have called America’s most beautiful grocery store. The work represents the most significant renovations to the Downtown Cleveland Heinen’s store, 900 Euclid Ave., since it opened in 2015.
The project involves a simplification of the store layout from a two-story retail center to a single-level facility for Heinen’s. It will also allow expansion of amenities for The 9 apartments and the hotel The Metropolitan at The 9. Most of The 9’s amenities are concentrated in the adjacent and connected 29-story tower.
The grocery store is located in the Gilded Age former Cleveland Trust Bank rotunda and extends into the ground floor of the neighboring 1010 Euclid Building. The lofty rotunda with its stained glass domed skylight will still be open to the public.
To consolidate the store’s layout into a single-level operation, it means moving the alcohol merchandise displays and the bathrooms from the second floor. Moving the alcohol is simple enough, but not the bathrooms.
Lawler Construction of Highland Heights was tapped for the job. It received a construction permit from the city’s Building Department on Nov. 14 to carry out $123,708 worth of construction work.
“(We’ll) make interior alterations to add restrooms to (the) ground floor per approved plans,” wrote Greg Ernst in the permit application. Ernst is a commercial and industrial architect at AODK Architecture of Lakewood. AODK designed the project.
He noted in public records that the work requires separate plumbing, heating-ventilating-air conditioning and electrical permits.
Neptune Plumbing and Heating Co. of Cleveland will install two water closet toilets, two lavatory sinks, 80 linear feet of drain pipe, waste and vent piping plus 80 linear feet of water distribution. Cost for that work is estimated at $25,000 and was authorized by a permit issued by the city Nov. 13.
Aberdeen Mechanical Inc. of Cleveland wrote in its Nov. 14 building permit application to the city’s Building Department that it is installing “exhaust duct and grilles and some duct demolition to add restrooms to the ground floor.” Cost of the work is estimated at $5,000, about $3,000 of which is for labor.
The owner of the grocery store property is Tower Ground LLC, an affiliate of the Geis Companies which has offices in The 9 but its headquarters are located in Streetsboro in Portage County.
Geis renovated the 1907-built former Cleveland Trust Bank rotunda into the grocery store and the 1971 Marcel Breuer-designed office tower into The 9 apartments and hotel. The tower was threatened with demolition by Cuyahoga County until it was sold to the Geis Companies.
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