A demolition application has been filed for the five-story Gilman Building at 1350 W. 3rd St. in downtown Cleveland's Warehouse District, putting one of the last standing structures in the area's so-called Superblock in the crosshairs. The application, submitted Friday to the city's building department, estimates demolition of the 18,290-square-foot structure would cost $282,000 — and according to one estimate, the teardown might ultimately yield only a small handful of parking spaces.
The filing was made on behalf of property owner 1350 W III LLC, an affiliate of Welty Enterprises of suburban Akron, by Randall Parsons, president of Akron-based AVID Architects Inc., according to NEOtrans. Parsons paid a $150 filing fee with the application, the outlet reports, but no plans or other attachments were submitted alongside it — the applicant reportedly said those plans would be submitted electronically at a later date. As Cleveland Magazine notes, demolition applicants in downtown Cleveland typically must provide plans for a replacement land use to win city approval, since parking lots are allowed only as an interim use after a building comes down.
A Building With a Contested Past
Accounts differ on exactly how old the Gilman Building is. NEOtrans reports it was built in 1882-83 for the A.S. Gilman Printing Co. and designed in the Victorian style by architect John Edelmann, while Crain's Cleveland Business has reported the building dates from 1900. The building's facade was modernized and re-cladded in the late 1960s, per the same NEOtrans report, which complicates its historic standing today.
That alteration is central to the debate over whether the Gilman qualifies for protection. Tom Yablonsky said the building's extensive changes might make it ineligible for historic protections, though he noted the Cleveland Landmarks Commission would have the final say on the matter, the report notes. Still, Yablonsky said the building merits checking out, arguing the city's surviving building stock should be protected where possible — and historic preservation consultants, per the same account, have said the 19th-century exterior may still remain beneath the later modernizations and could potentially be restored.
Despite the demolition filing, city and Cuyahoga County records list the Gilman Building in good condition with no pending building-code violations, the outlet's report states. The building was renovated in 2004 by Stark Enterprises for use as its headquarters, and it has sat without active office use or new tenant marketing for years, drawing instead on billboard revenue from a sign on its west side, according to the same reporting.
The Last Survivor of a Vanished Block
The Gilman Building has carried a notable distinction for years: a 2021 NEOtrans report described it as the only building still standing in the Warehouse District's Superblock, a stretch of land largely cleared for parking and development over time. A separate 2020 NEOtrans report noted the Superblock's last demolition before that point took place in 2011 — underscoring how rare it would be for another structure there to come down.
The Superblock's transformation accelerated after Sherwin-Williams paid $49.4 million for 6.9 acres of parking lots there, per the 2021 NEOtrans report, clearing the way for the coatings giant's massive new headquarters campus. Welty itself has deep ties to that project, having formed a joint venture with Gilbane Building Co. to manage construction of the Sherwin-Williams headquarters and having used the Gilman Building as a construction field office during the work, according to the dossier's sourcing.
Parking Pressure in a Historic District
Any demolition in the Warehouse District, a designated historic district, is expected to face greater scrutiny than elsewhere downtown. Yet the practical payoff looks modest: based on the Gilman's footprint, NEOtrans estimated that tearing down the building might yield only 10 to 12 parking spaces — a small return given the scale of demolition involved, according to the outlet's reporting.
Parking demand in the district has nonetheless grown tighter since the Sherwin-Williams headquarters opened, a dynamic underscored by recent moves elsewhere in the neighborhood, including a 350-space lot sale on St. Clair at West 9th Street that some of those spaces may ultimately serve state use. Welty acquired the Gilman Building from Realife Real Estate Group for $3.375 million in 2021, according to the dossier's sourcing, while Crain's Cleveland Business separately reported the property most recently sold for $3.38 million to an affiliate of Welty Building Co.
Whether the demolition application will ultimately move forward, and whether the promised plans will materialize, remains to be seen. For now, the fate of one of the Warehouse District's oldest survivors sits with city reviewers and the Landmarks Commission, which Yablonsky said will have the final word on the building's historic status.
