Willson Middle School on East 55th Street is among the Cleveland school buildings to be demolished. It was among multiple properties the school district and city had hoped to preserve and renovate for new uses (Google). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.
Three schools face imminent razing
While Cleveland has been lauded for attracting investors to redevelop closed school buildings, things don’t always go as community officials hope. So unfortunately eight mostly historic school buildings are to be demolished, with three facing imminent demolition.
The three schools for which demolition permit applications were submitted to the city in the past week were Iowa-Maple Elementary, 12510 Maple Ave. in Glenville; Paul Revere Elementary, 10706 Sandusky Ave. in Union-Miles, and Willson Middle, 1625 E. 55th St. in St. Clair-Superior.
Architectural firm Robert P. Madison International of Cleveland submitted the demolition permits after the city and the Cleveland Metropolitan School District (CMSD) couldn’t find development partners to preserve and redevelop the school buildings. The schools closed due to their age and/or declining enrollment.
The oldest of the three is Willson Middle, built in 1903 and expanded in 1927 with an auditorium and gymnasium. It was named after Willson Avenue. The avenue was renamed East 55th Street in 1905.
The school closed in May 2005 and sat vacant since, despite being designated by the city as an historic landmark. It was designed by Frank S. Barnum who was the architect for 75 of Cleveland’s school buildings.
Many Cleveland schools were foundations of their neighborhoods and architectural landmarks like Paul Revere Elementary on Sandusky Avenue in Union-Miles (Google).
The three-story, 71,775-square-foot Willson Middle will be demolished for $721,191, public records show. The building was already remediated of any hazardous materials.
Demolition of Willson Elementary will create a 2.9-acre development site. It is across the street from an even larger abandoned building, the 650,000-square-foot Richman Brothers factory. Its redevelopment has also proven elusive.
Paul Revere Elementary was built in 1920 and expanded in 1925-1926. The original school and its additions were designed by architect Walter McCornack.
It officially closed by 2015. At $1.12 million, it is the most costly demolition and remediation of the three. Taking down the 88,218-square-foot, two-story structure will create a huge, 4.9-acre redevelopment site.
The newest of the three is Iowa-Maple Elementary, built in 1956. Once a highly rated school, it closed in 2019 despite efforts by the community to keep it open.
Closed in 2019, Iowa-Maple Elementary on Maple Avenue in Glenville still appeared structurally sound in May. But it won’t repurposed. Instead, the school will be demolished (Google).
It was considered for sale to and re-use as a charter school. That plan fell through, as did any interest by investors seeking to redevelop the building on its 2-acre site.
Its demolition and remediation is projected to cost CMSD $907,699, public records show. The two-story Iowa-Maple Elementary measures 74,709 square feet.
This school, like the others, will be demolished in their entirety. Their sites will be graded and seeded. All curb cuts will be removed, with new curbs and sidewalks restored at the curb-cut removal locations. As many trees as possible will be preserved, the permit applications show.
Those demolitions plus five others still in the works are the result of an agreement approved in May 2025 with the Ohio Facilities Construction Commission called the Segment Nine Agreement. Like the first three, the other five schools to be razed are all on the city’s East Side.
They are Audubon Middle, 3055 Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. in Buckeye-Woodhill, Central High, 2225 E. 40th St. in Central, Cranwood Elementary, 13604 Christine Ave. in Corlett, Empire Junior High, 9113 Parmalee Ave. in Glenville, Mount Auburn Elementary, 10110 Mt. Auburn Ave. in Buckeye–Woodhill.
Empire Junior High on Parmalee Avenue in Glenville was to be repurposed with affordable senior housing but instead will be demolished. However, demolition permits have not yet been secured for this former school (Google).
Some of those schools are city landmarks and some had redevelopments pending for them which didn’t pan out. One of the most surprising failed redevelopments was that of Empire Junior High.
That school, built in 1915 with Jacobethan architecture, was to be repurposed with 63 affordable senior apartments by Boston-based Beacon Communities for $27 million. It had raised most of the financing to buy and rebuild the school but let its purchase agreement lapse and its building permit expire last year.
Also resulting from the Segment Nine Agreement with the state is a new, $82 million high school at the Glenville High School property, 650 E. 113th St., to house grades 9-12 to support 1,200 students by 2031. State funding for new construction and demolitions is $64.94 million with $30.56 million from CMSD.
As a result of the new school, continued declining enrollment and a need to save $30 million, a dozen Cleveland schools were offered in May for redevelopment including the historic Collinwood High School plus several new schools built in the 21st century.
The city’s Department of Development said it hopes to select buyers-developers for those school properties by its Aug. 7 deadline. The city issued a request for qualifications from prospective development teams seeking to repurpose those sites.
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