1717 East Ninth Building


1717 East Ninth Building, also known as the East Ohio Building, is a skyscraper in Downtown Cleveland, the U.S. state of Ohio's emerging Nine-Twelve District. Completed in 1959, it was one of the first modernist high-rises in Cleveland, along with the Illuminating Building, standing at.

History

It was designed by Emery Roth and Sons of New York City. Tishman Properties also of New York City was the developer. Ground was broken in March 1958 and in April 1959 it opened to the public. There is a 600-car parking garage attached to the tower. It was built on the site of the old Greyhound bus station, after Greyhound built a new bus terminal on Superior Avenue a few blocks away from the East Ohio Building in 1948.
East Ohio Gas, Cleveland's natural gas supplier, occupied the tower until its merger with Richmond, Virginia-based Dominion Resources. On the lobby level, East Ohio had a customer pay center and exhibits of the benefits of natural gas appliances. In addition, they had a meter showing how much natural gas was supplied to Cleveland.
On November 22, 2006, the largely vacant building was bought by New York City-based Sovereign Partners, LLC for around $12 million. The buying group planned on making certain improvements to the building, the details were announced in early 2007. It was named to the National Register of Historic Places on January 23, 2013.

Conversion to apartments

In March 2012, the K & D Group of Willoughby, Ohio announced that it had signed a contract to buy the 21-story tower and planned to convert it to 223 apartments, making it the tallest fully residential building in Cleveland. As reported in 2012 and 2013, K & D then planned, contingent on tax credits and other financing, to open the first of 223 apartments in July 2014 and to finish the $65 million conversion by August 2015.