The City of Cleveland is an exciting place to visit anytime of the year. It is
located on the shores of Lake Erie where it plays host to many wonderful
attractions such as: the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, the world-
renowned Cleveland Orchestra, and of course the red hot Cleveland Indians.
However, the focus of this website is to analyze a case study of a downtown
re-development that has made a positive change to Cleveland; this positive
change was the conversion of the old Terminal Tower into the Tower City
Shopping Center.
The Terminal Tower was dedicated in June 1930, and was the tallest building
between New York and Chicago until the current Key Tower was built in 1992 in
Public Square. The Terminal Tower was used as a railway station and was home
to the Rail Empire of the famous Van Sweringen brothers. Railroad passage
ended in 1977; however, the updated station still offers direct connections to
the airport, and waterfront. The Terminal Tower is now part of the Tower City
Center Complex. In 1989 the Terminal Tower was renovated into an upscale
shopping mall. Inside, the shopping complex hosts over 115 specialty
retailers, including Dillards. It has a large cafeteria style eatery with
several different styles of food for anyone's taste buds.
After interviewing different people involved in the re-development project, I
found out that the shopping complex is doing extremely well. I spoke with a
city planner who informed me that one problem with the new shopping center is
the fact that it doing so well, it has dried up other retail in the
surrounding area. Not far from the Tower City Center is another shopping
center named the Galleria Mall. Apparently the Galleria has been having some
significant problems with customer turnout since the opening of Tower City.
One major reason for this is parking. The parking around the new Tower City
shopping center is quite good; it has several parking garages and surface lots
within walking distance. However, the Galleria Mall is located very close to
the highway and has limited parking available that is within a reasonable
walking distance.
I wanted to get the views of not only the planners and developers, but I also gained perspective from another group of people involved in the project--the
merchants that are housed around the shopping complex. I spoke to one merchant
who owns a small jewelry and autograph business located near the downtown
mall. This merchant felt it turned out to be a fantastic re-development.
He said the re-development changed the downtown shopping atmosphere
for the better. However, he did have a few small issues with the Tower City Complex.
One is the rapid transit connection that is in the basement of the
new complex. He informed me that the problem is the connection funnels people
underground directly to the new sports arena and other locations in and around
the downtown. From this, he argues that people do not ever have to go outside
and walk the streets where many wonderful small businesses are located. He
went on to say that this underground connection defeats the purpose of having
people move in and around the downtown area, which is bad for any businesses
outside the Tower City Complex.
As you can see though, the re-development of the Terminal Tower into a
beautiful downtown shopping mall has been very successful for the City of
Cleveland. Aside from a few small problems, the overall scope of the project
was grand and proved to be advantageous for the cities downtown.
Brian Frantz
The City of Cleveland is an exciting place to visit anytime of the year. It is
located on the shores of Lake Erie where it plays host to many wonderful
attractions such as: the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, the world-
renowned Cleveland Orchestra, and of course the red hot Cleveland Indians.
However, the focus of this website is to analyze a case study of a downtown
re-development that has made a positive change to Cleveland; this positive
change was the conversion of the old Terminal Tower into the Tower City
Shopping Center.
