View full sizeThe Plain DealerThe Plain Dealer’s critic Steven Litt has won the Robert P. Bergman Prize as part of the 2010 Cleveland Arts Prize.
CLEVELAND, Ohio — In a rare move, a Cleveland Arts Prize has been awarded not to a person or an organization, but a neighborhood.
Gordon Square Arts District — a collection of theaters, restaurants and galleries clustered around West 65th Street and Detroit Avenue — and its leaders are being honored for having the vision and influence to revitalize a Cleveland neighborhood using the arts as an economic engine.
And among other winners of the arts prize is Steven Litt, The Plain Dealer’s art and architecture critic won the Robert P. Bergman Prize for leaders who are dedicated to a democratic vision of the arts.
Gordon Square leaders include Cleveland City Councilman Matt Zone, Detroit Shoreway Community Development Organization executive director Jeff Ramsey, Gordon Square Arts District executive director Joy Roller, and Cleveland Public Theatre executive artistic director Raymond Bobgan.
Winners of the 2010 Cleveland Arts Prize — given to creative artists whose work enriches Northeast Ohio and whose accomplishments set a standard of excellence — will be announced today. They will be honored at the annual awards event Saturday, June 26, at the Cleveland Museum of Art.
“This crop of winners is broad-based and reflective of Cleveland today,” said arts prize executive director Marcie Bergman. “I find it thrilling to look at the people represented.”
Here are this year’s winners:
Lifetime Achievement Award in Visual Art: Artist Audra Skuodas spends so much time in her Oberlin studio, her husband jokes that she’ll grow roots there. Naturally a reclusive person, Skuodas has never done the kind of self-promotion that many artists do to goose their careers.
So it was a wonderful moment when she learned that she had received the Cleveland Arts Prize Lifetime Achievement Award in Visual Art.
“It’s just a beautiful reassurance,” said Skuodas, pronounced SKOO-dus. “I exist.”
Skuodas has spent 40 years building a body of work that includes wall sculpture, book making, drawing and writing.
Cleveland Arts Prize
What: The 50th annual prizes recognize artists with ties to Northeast Ohio who have made significant contributions in the arts.
When: Ceremony is Saturday, June 26.
Where: Gartner Auditorium, Cleveland Museum of Art.
Tickets: VIP tickets are $250, patron tickets are $100 and general admission tickets are $50.
Info: 216-321-0012 or info@clevelandartsprize.org.
Martha Joseph Prizes for Distinguished Service to the Arts: Honors an individual or organization whose vision or philanthropy has made a significant contribution to the arts in Northeast Ohio. It is being awarded to Gordon Square Arts District and its leaders.
Other winners include:
• Joanne Cohen, executive director of the Art and Medicine Institute’s Art Program at the Cleveland Clinic.
Harper Collins BooksFormer Akron Beacon Journal reporter and author David Giffels is the recipient of the 2010 Cleveland Arts Prize’s midcareer award.
• Trudy Wiesenberger, curator and creator of the Art Program at University Hospitals of Cleveland, a trustee at Cleveland Institute of Art and a co-founder of the institute’s craft council.
• Mary Louise Hahn, former chair of the Cleveland Arts Prize and consultant for the Cleveland Foundation, where she bolstered the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award jury, increased the awards prize to $10,000, and turned the awards ceremony into a compelling event.
• Mickie McGraw, co-founder of the Art Studio at MetroHealth Medical Center.
Emerging Artist Award in Literature: This prize, awarded to a promising artist living in Northeast Ohio, carries a $5,000 prize. Poet and author Phil Metres, an associate professor of English at John Carroll University, is the recipient.
Mid-Career Awards: This honor spotlights artists who have received national and regional recognition and have lived in this region. The literature award will go to David Giffels, former Akron Beacon Journal reporter and author of “All the Way Home.” Giffels is assistant professor of English at the University of Akron. The music and dance prize will go to world percussionist Jamey Haddad, visiting associate professor of percussion at Oberlin College. Giffels and Haddad each will receive $2,500.
Lifetime Achievement Award: Writer Henry Adams, professor of art history at Case Western Reserve University, is the author of “Eakins Revealed: The Secret Life of an American Artist.”
[PDF] [Original Cleveland.com Article]
Team NEO study projects economic boost from Ingenuityfest, Gordon Square Arts District
March 26, 2010, 2:56PM
Lisa DeJong/The Plain DealerGordon Square Arts District is pumping millions of dollars and new jobs into the regional economy by attracting patrons to its restaurants, galleries and theaters, according to a report by Team NEO. The ripple effects of Ingenuityfest and the Gordon Square Arts District pour millions of dollars into the region’s economy, according to two new Team NEO studies.
Team NEO, a nonprofit organization that works to attract business to the region, looked at visitors from outside the area, job growth, construction and other factors, said Team NEO vice president for research Jim Robey.
The arts district will have generated $317 million in sales and transactions in Cleveland, and $436 million in Ohio, by 2013, the research shows.
Gordon Square aims to be a destination neighborhood on Cleveland’s West Side. It offers shopping, dining and live theater. It’s the home of art galleries, Cleveland Public Theatre and the Capitol Theatre — a renovated movie theater that reopened in 2009 after 24 years.
Two of Gordon Square’s five Phase One capital projects — the theater renovation and streetscape improvements along Detroit Avenue — were finished in 2009. Still to come are the renovation of Cleveland Public Theatre, construction of a new home for the Near West Theatre and creation of additional parking.
Team NEO’s look at Gordon Square forecasts into 2013, when the arts district’s Phase One construction projects are scheduled for completion.
According to projections, in 2013, Gordon Square will have created nearly 800 jobs in Cleveland, and nearly 200 jobs in Ohio, and provided $2.3 million in combined city, county and state tax revenues for that year.
“We have always said this is a project of regional importance,” said Joy Roller, the district’s executive director. “We are creating the kind of place that attracts and retains Clevelanders.”
Gordon Square Arts District is a collaboration of Cleveland Public Theatre, Detroit Shoreway Community Development Organization and Near West Theatre.
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Entertainment Impact, Friday!, Movie Impact, Movies »
It’s show time! Capitol Theatre reopening means flicks and fun on the West Side
September 25, 2009, 12:00AM
The opening of a movie theater is not typically a five-star event. But when it’s in Cleveland, as opposed to some distant shopping mall, and when it’s expected to ignite 15 blocks worth of civic revitalization, it’s a rare beast indeed.
Like so many well-intentioned, let’s-bring-back-the-city crusades that have sprinkled ethereal hope dust over Cleveland for the past 30 years, the restoration of the Capitol Theatre could have taken a big, fat belly-flop into the cesspool of broken dreams.
But no.
This elaborate renovation project connecting Cleveland’s past with its future actually succeeded. The new Capitol, at 1390 West 65th Street just north of Detroit Avenue, opens next weekend.
For the city’s cultural and nightlife scene, the theater represents something film fans have been requesting for years: a movie house on the West Side that’s convenient for Clevelanders, within striking distance of Lakewood and Rocky River, and one that might offer the independent and foreign fare available for decades at the Cedar Lee Theatre in Cleveland Heights.
The project worked for two reasons, according to Jeffrey Ramsey, executive director of the Detroit Shoreway Community Development Organization. One was fresh financial sources: the federal New Market Tax Credit and Ohio’s Historic Tax Credit.
The other reason: “This is not a stand-alone theater,” he said. “It is part of a partnership with Cleveland Public Theatre, the Near West Theatre and the neighborhood.”
If it had just been the Capitol Theatre, said Ramsey, it never would have happened.
Loads of determined folks within his organization and the Gordon Square Arts District, which runs along Detroit Avenue from West 58th Street to West 73rd Street, made it a reality, along with about $7.5 million from the tax credits, a city of Cleveland loan and grants from Cuyahoga County, the Cleveland Foundation and the Ohio Cultural Facilities Commission.
Organizers hope the sparkling movie house, which took 16 months to renovate and will employ about 20 people, draws film-goers who will spill into shops, restaurants, galleries and bars in the neighborhood before and after shows. The area is already on the rise with choice eateries, such as Luxe, La Boca and Stone Mad Irish Pub, drawing good crowds.
The theater, which opened in 1921 as a vaudeville and silent-movie house and has been shuttered since 1985, used to seat nearly 1,400. It has been remodeled into three movie theaters. The main house will hold 420, while the two upstairs theaters, carved out of the old balcony, will seat nearly 100 each.
While the projection systems will be state-of-the-art digital, the renovation retained much of the site’s original decorative touches, embracing the building’s historic features. It’s a great-looking theater, particularly the main house.
A gala fund-raiser Thursday night will be followed by a ribbon cutting and free movie Friday morning. Then, Friday afternoon, the theater opens to the ticket-buying public with three films: LeBron James’ high school flashback, “More Than a Game”; Michael Moore’s latest documentary, “Capitalism: a Love Story”; and the re-release of “Toy Story” and its sequel, packaged together in a new 3-D version.
The theatre hopes to draw 100,000 people a year. “The Capitol is the economic engine for the district,” said Ramsey.
It’s also just one step in the planned $30 million dollar project that includes a major overhaul of the Cleveland Public Theatre (which starts next month), performance space for the Near West Theatre (anyone have $3.5 million to donate?), and streetscape improvements that include widened sidewalks, new lighting and public art.
“Once the Capitol opens, there are going to be more amenities for my customers, more things for them to do in the neighborhood,” said Raymond Bobgan, executive director of Cleveland Public Theatre, which is around the corner from the Capitol on Detroit Avenue. “They’re going to be safer with the increased foot traffic and the improved streetscape, which will have more lighting and [better] parking.”
There is also a presumed synergy that should benefit CPT. “I believe independent-movie goers would be the most logical place to expand our audience,” said Bobgan.
Showing a mix of specialty, mainstream films
Which brings us to one perception that’s worth clarifying.
Exhibit A. For years, this reporter has received dozens of phone calls and e-mails saying the same thing: Why don’t we have a Cedar Lee on the West Side? Why do we have to schlep all the way to Cleveland Heights for foreign films, quirky indie fare and documentaries?
Exhibit B. Likewise, Cleveland Cinemas, which operates five theaters in Greater Cleveland, including the Cedar Lee, has received untold numbers of inquiries begging for alternatives to Hollywood hogwash on the West Side.
The Capitol, owned by the Detroit Shoreway organization, will be run by Cleveland Cinemas. You’d assume they’d be screaming from the rooftop, “Long suffering West Siders, your ship has come in. The Capitol will finally become a Cedar Lee of the West!”
Except it won’t.
“It’s not going to be the Cedar Lee,” said Jon Forman, president of Cleveland Cinemas. “There will be mainstream movies along with some specialty programming. We want to make a commitment to showing specialty films at the Capitol, but we’ll only be able to show them if the community supports them.”
The programming at the Capitol will be akin to Shaker Square Cinemas, where more mainstream films drive attendance, with an occasional indie mixed in. If the Capitol sells enough tickets to, say, a dark, disturbing Danish drama, it will offer more subtitled cinema. If documentaries are a hit, it will schedule more.
One proven beneficiary of Forman’s theaters is restaurants. The expansion of the Cedar Lee, which grew from one screen to six over several years, kick-started a restaurant revival along Lee Road. Ditto Shaker Square Cinemas, where the renovated former Colony Theatre, which Forman transformed into six screens, is the perfect complement to the square’s buzzing restaurant scene.
It will take about a year before Cleveland Cinemas can truly gauge the success of the Capitol (the fall is traditionally a downtime for movie attendance). In the meantime, the re-opening lends the Capitol the duel distinction of being Cleveland’s newest and oldest theater. The previous biggest overhaul was in the 1930s, when the theater was changed to accommodate a new invention: sound movies.
“It was a big deal to walk down to the Capitol,” said Bernice Miller, who used to go to the theater with her girlfriends in the 1930s and 1940s. Even more fun was the roller rink in the basement (gone now, as is the old pool hall).
Movies cost 5 cents, and later, Miller managed to survive the outrageous price increase to 10 cents. Basically, for a quarter, you could take in a newsreel, cartoons, a double feature, grab some popcorn and candy and still have change.
Miller, nee Doy, now 82 and living in Brunswick, grew up near West 65th Street and Lorain Avenue where her father ran Doy’s Candy Kitchen. When I first spoke with her, she couldn’t recall the titles of specific films she had seen at the Capitol.
After consulting her childhood diaries, she called back a few days later to report that she saw “Jackass Mail” with Marjorie Main and Wallace Beery at the Capitol in 1942 and Lana Turner in the romantic “Marriage is a Private Affair” in 1945.
Miller hopes to return next week. “I want to see what they’ve done with the place.”
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