All of Zone’s efforts couldn’t put the Huletts back together again.
Cleveland Councilman Matt Zone, who spent the last 12 months pleading to save Cleveland’s last pair of 17-ton 10-story ore unloaders from the scrap heap, was rebuffed by the cash- strapped city and county among many others, he told an emotional crowd at Gordon Square Arcade last night.
Six million dollars is the estimate to restore, move, build a foundation and re-erect the icons of Cleveland’s industrial past, Zone added.
The Port Authority, which took ownership and dismantled the Huletts in 1999, wants them cleared away from their current storage on the Cleveland Bulk Terminal on Whiskey Island. The Port leases the 18-acre CBT to shipping concern Oglebay Norton, which wants the 1.5 acres for a pile limestone instead of a pile of Huletts.
Oglebay Norton’s CEO and top brass attended the meeting and assured the audience that it needs the space cleared in one to two months when a new contract for limestone (being sold to a smokestack scrubber business in southern Ohio) takes effect. Zone said the company agreed to store a few select pieces (such as the leg and bucket) for another two years if the $6 million could not be raised in time.
Citizen groups have been fighting to save the Huletts since 1992, the year Conrail stopped operating them. Among the early advocates were the Cleveland Waterfront Coalition and Ohio Canal Corridor.
Tim Donovan, OCC director, was part of an effort to find a new location for the Huletts. In 2005, he and former Campbell Chief of Staff Chris Ronayne, negotiated with a landowner in the Flats for property near the Carter Road bridge (proposed site of Canal Basin Park). Negotiations failed and, in Donovan’s view, it sealed the fate for the huletts. “If you can’t secure a site, you can’t raise money to save the huletts,” he said.
The other sites considered were next to the Steamship Mather — but its owners rejected the proposal — and Whiskey Island’s Wendy Park. Donovan said Wendy Park hasn’t been ruled out.
The Committee to save Cleveland’s Huletts’ Ray Saikus and Steve Merkel presented documents detailing an agreement hashed out between the Port and the Cleveland Landmarks Commission. It allowed for the Huletts’ dismantling and storage on the CBT, and called for the Port to raise funds to pay for their reassembly on a new site. Fundraising by the Port never happened.
The Cleveland Waterfront Coalition did raise $272,000 from individual donations in 1999 and $115,000 in grants to pay for feasibility studies and an engineering study on the Flats property. There's a serious lack of funding resources on the federal or state level for preservation of historic industry, Donovan acknowledged.
During the public comment period, the idea of heritage tourism was raised. A Hulett in Chicago is open to the public for tours, according to one unconfirmed comment (The last two known Huletts are in operation on Chicago’s Calumet River.).
The Cuyahoga River was designated by the U.S. EPA as an American Heritage River (another comment) but financial aid for preservation or public art doesn’t appear to be readily available through the EPA.
Two excellent case studies for preserving cultural icons and reusing “industrial monuments” in new ways can be found in Germany’s industrial Rhein Valley Emscher Park and at the Port of Oakland, California.
These role models are being studied by rust belt preservationists from Pittsburgh to Chicago who see quality of life assets as key to attracting younger generations.
Particularly instructive is the Port of Oakland, which has an openness and community development mission distinctly lacking from the Cleveland Cuyahoga County Port Authority. The Oakland Port develops parks, sponsors public art, invites tours and even has a retail development wing.
Share your thoughts. Do you know of a ‘sugar daddy’ who has $6 million to donate to save the Huletts? Should the Huletts be sold for scrap and have the money pay for an industrial museum or an exhibit, perhaps at the Great Lakes Science Center (where pictures and video of the huletts can be displayed)?
Huletts are all but gone
Marc Lefkowitz Says:You are understanding correctly, Stu, the Huletts were dismantled in 1999 and have been sitting in a pile, rusting, at the Cleveland Bulk Terminal. The agreement struck between the city and the Port to store them there has expired, and since Oglebay Norton recently signed a new contract, the company would like to access all of the land it leases from the Port.
Thus, after two years of searching for an answer, suddenly the Huletts have to be moved in less than a month. Oglebay has agreed to continue to store the upper portion of the Huletts "the leg and the bucket" for another two years. Presumably, the rest will be sold for scrap. The proceeds can help in the effort to find a spot for the remaining parts.
Others at the public meeting also noted that the grandeur of the Huletts will be lost with only the leg and bucket. The city and Ohio Canal Corridor seemed resigned to let this fight end, while Friends of the Huletts vowed to continue the fight to find a home. But, without an estimated $6 million and a designated home, the Huletts appear to be heading for the scrap heap (Perhaps it's possible to move the lower sections for longer term storage but it would cost $ millions. Moving all of the parts seems more likely.).
The examples of reusing old industrial sites as historic tourism in East Germany were just written about again in Monday's Wall Street Journal. People pay $10 to climb on an old mine conveyor bridge in Lusatia.
Here, prospects don't appear favorable for saving these giant icons of our industrial past. Efforts have been made and failed — so the pictures and the video of the Huletts from 1992 when they last operated will be the only exhibit to future generations.
Impact of Oglebay acquisition
Marc Lefkowitz Says:Oglebay Norton's acquisition by a Belgian firm which plans to move its headquarters to Pittsburgh raises many questions about the future of Cleveland's lakefront, including:
The city's Lakefront plan still shows the marina at Whiskey Island being filled in as a gravel dock—will the city alter its plans?
Is this an opportunity to re-examine a plan to finally remove the gravel piles from our most prime waterfront property where the river meets the lake? (if shipping isn't part of the city's future, where can we move piles of ore gravel off the lakefront, as Lorain did moving the piles up the Black River).
Will the Port need to reconsider its planned move to a dredge island off E. 55th? Will it want to consolidate operations elsewhere?
Does this offer a reprieve to the Hulett Ore Unloaders—does this news mean that Oglebay will no longer seek to expand its operations on the western half of Whiskey Island?
re:Costly icons of our industrial past
stu_spivack@www... Says:Pardon me if I'm being dense, but I'm not entirely clear on how this was resolved. The Huletts have been dismantled and are set to be moved. Oglebay has committed to storing some of the parts. What will happen to the other parts?
The picture you used in this post is awe inspiring. It makes me want to see a Hulett in person and I hope that I'll be able to do that in Cleveland rather than doing it in Chicago. I think the value of these objects is tied to the imposing stature. With only a small fraction or even a majority of the parts, I think you might as well just have any other pile of rusted metal. Which parts are being saved and which are being discarded?
Is some action currently planned which would be pracically irreversible?
Is the disposition of these parts still subject to discussion? Or, for that matter, is there anything being done or that might reasonably be done? Might storage facilities be found for the other parts? How is Oglebay going to move the leg and bucket? What's involved in storing or moving the other parts?
Heard Zone on WCPN
curatorius Says:the other day but didn't realize that time was running out.
Can Peter B. Lewis help? What about an excise tax? Or a special tax on some industry that uses the waterfront?
If reassembly is truly a lost cause, I suppose it'd be best as you say to sell the scrap and build a museum to industrial history.
sell scrap for museum?
Susan Miller Says:I am curious as to what has transpired regarding seeking funds. Have folks been going door to door for individual donations or has there been a concerted effort among local interested nonprofit partners. I realize that the Western Reserve Historical Society may be strapped with their own woes and the Historic Preservation Society probably also has its hands full, but this is a once in a lifetime opportunity for Cleveland.
Think of these things as dinosaurs -- relics of our industrial past. Now think about a local museum -- that of Natural History. Try to imagine, if you will the cost of excavating, reassembling and protecting "Happy," the 70-foot-long Haplocanthosaurus delfsi. More than 6 million; less? The Huletts are above ground; we have the drawings; we can much more easily reassembled them that a dinosaur skeleton. They are part of the history of the region and should be preserved for our children and our children's children. When we stand on the shoulders of our ancestors, we can see farther.
A move to scrap them and use the money for a museum sounds OK, but what would a museum to commemorate our industrial past be without these important centerpieces.
A consortium of partners could save the Huletts if they worked together. The Cuyahoga Valley National Park, the Metroparks, Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland Restoration Society and Preservation Resource Center of Northeastern Ohio, Inventure Place. There are surely more. Was collaboration tried? Did we exhaust the possibility of grants from the state and federal humanities councils?