Originally known as the Society Center, the Key Tower would never have been without the help of a few pioneering city leaders who decided it was time to think out of the box and break the rules.
For 60 years, an edict from the brothers O.P. and M.J. Van Sweringen, who built the iconic Terminal Tower in 1928, was in effect to prohibit anyone from building a structure higher than the Terminal Tower.
That even held true for one of downtown’s tallest structures, the BP America Building, now called 200 Public Square. It was completed in 1985 and measured 659 feet tall, just under the 708-foot tall Terminal Tower.
Seven years later, Key Tower, the subject of this month’s Uniquely Cleveland, was completed, measuring 948 feet (with the spire). Times had changed. City leaders agreed that with an ambitious project such as the Key Tower, it was time to rethink the rules.
A few years ago, a local magazine asked former Cleveland City Council President George Forbes and former Mayor George Voinovich about how the rules were broken.
“I knew that Cleveland was restricted to a certain attitude,” Forbes said. “It was: ‘We did this in the past, this is what we always did in the past and we’ve got to keep doing it.’ “When Dick Jacobs (who developed who built the Key Tower) came with his plan, I said, ‘Build the building taller than Terminal Tower so we can break out of these things that have held us back for years.’ He said, ‘You bet. I’m going to do that.’”
Voinovich also had to break a taboo on tax abatements to grant them to Key Tower.
“Cleveland had no tax abatement to speak of,” Voinovich said. “Other cities were really into tax abatement for five to 10 years. You talk about that kind of a building, and the jobs created and the image for the city? That was a big deal.”
When rules are delaying progress on a new venture and those rules don’t seem to make sense any more, it’s time to think about breaking them. In the case of the Key Tower, the time was right for change. It made sense to relook at the rules for not only the height of a skyscraper, but for providing tax abatements. Add to that the reputation of Jacobs as a community-minded entrepreneur who counted the Cleveland Indians among his properties, and it was a natural fit.
It may have been an easier decision to break the tallest building rule since Jacobs was a known quantity, but that just goes to show that you need to assess the risk of breaking a rule. To break a rule just for the sake of change doesn’t seem sensible. What would be the payoff? What jobs would be created? What innovation would be developed? But to change tradition to permit growth and create progress makes breaking tradition prudent. And in many cases, the risk was well worth taking.
