Last week, Cleveland’s Rock & Roll Hall of Fame was given a nod of approval from the city planning commission for a $100 million addition. The Rock Hall seeks to break ground this year. At its Friday March 31 meeting, the Cleveland Planning Commission granted conceptual approval to a 50,000-square-foot addition to the original I.M. Pei-designed building. The project would add offices, a main entrance lobby, and a concert venue to the Rock Hall. It would also renovate the I.M. Pei building to create more exhibit space and add a new green space and graded pathway to the lakefront.
“We’re now 30 years old, and it’s time for us to expand and offer more experiences for visitors as well as the community,” said Greg Harris, CEO of the Rock Hall, to the planning commission. “This new project will feature extensive new spaces, including non-ticketed public spaces, with new opportunities to experience the lakefront both indoors and outdoors.”
Harris said the Rock Hall has already raised significant funds towards the project, which has been on the drawing boards since at least 2020 and has been thought of since the Rock Hall’s opening. The project needs to come back to the planning commission for schematic and final approval. There was no discussion of how long the construction project would take.
Mark Faulkner, an associate principal with the Practice for Architecture and Urbanism (PAU) in New York, one of the architects on the project along with Cleveland-based Robert P. Madison International, said the project seeks to create more exhibit space, relocate office space, create a better entranceway, and build a multipurpose space for concerts and events.
“This is an iconic building by I.M. Pei,” Faulkner told the commission. “He is a hero to us at PAU and we respect him greatly. With the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, we wanted to respect it but also to have our own presence.” He added, “It’s a bit of a ‘both and’ here,” in terms of both respecting the original design and adding their own signature style to the addition.
The low-slung addition intersects with but also extends away from the original building, so as not to interrupt its iconic pyramid design. The new building would relocate the Rock Hall entrance to street level at Erieside Avenue so that it’s more accessible and visitors don’t have to walk across as far to get there. The new building will offer free unticketed space at the front entrance and also connect to the waterfront and the harborwalk at North Coast Marina and Voinovich Park at the E. 9th St. Pier.
Lisa Switkin with James Corner Field Operations, which is designing the landscape portion of the project, told the planning commission that the project includes a community park between the Rock Hall’s new addition and the Great Lakes Science Center. Plans show a meandering pathway and trees and a significant reduction in slope, allowing people to get to the lakefront harborwalk from the Rock Hall without traversing any steps at all.
“It would be an immersive walk that would dramatize the sense of arrival to the lake,” Switkin said of the proposed green space and graded pathway.
The city planning commission’s Downtown/Flats design review committee unanimously approved the conceptual renderings at its last meeting, making some recommendations about how to connect the buildings to one another and improve the entryway, among other concerns. The planning commission asked the applicants to address these issues in their next presentation.
You can watch planning commission meetings on YouTube. To send questions, comments, and feedback to the Cleveland City Planning Commission, email cityplanning@clevelandohio.gov or call 216-664-2210.
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