CLEVELAND — The first time Kelly Flamos walked into the Variety Theatre, she fell in love.
It was the waiting area that grabbed her – a room nestled between the entrance and the main hall. In that quiet space, where vintage light fixtures still hang from the ceiling, she imagined a bar where the community would come together, even when the stage was dark.
In January, Flamos closed the door on that dream. Two-and-a-half years after buying the Variety, she put it up for sale – in hopes that someone else can finally revive it.
“It’s gonna take a village to turn the lights back on,” she said on a late-May morning, while standing inside the nearly century-old theater on Cleveland’s West Side.
The Variety closed in the 1980s after having lived many lives, first as a vaudeville theater, then a movie palace, and later as a scrappy concert venue. Now it’s at a tipping point – at risk of being lost to deterioration or demolition if a savior doesn’t come along.
And it’s not the only historic neighborhood theater in Cleveland that needs reinvention.
In Little Italy, there’s the Mayfield Theatre, which is condemned. The owner says he’s still working on a potential deal to transform the boarded-up building into an event center. Watch more:
RELATED: The Mayfield Theatre in Little Italy is condemned. Neighbors want it cleaned up.
On Buckeye Road, there’s the long-vacant Moreland Theater, which a local nonprofit hopes to bring back as the centerpiece of a Black arts and culture district. Workers recently put a new roof on the building and shored up the foundation. There’s talk about bringing the National Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame to the space, but that’s not a done deal.
RELATED: On Buckeye Road, historic buildings could become a canvas for Black arts and culture
For years, Flamos drove around Cleveland, wondering about the stories behind all the empty buildings she saw. Her experience at the Variety opened her eyes.
“I guess I’ve learned the hard way that it’s not that easy,” she said of development. “And I think there are some fundamental changes that need to happen to … reduce the barriers for people like me that aren’t seasoned developers, that may not have access to capital like seasoned investors do. … Because the Variety is one of many blocks in the city of Cleveland that are just like this.”
‘More than just commodity space’
While vacant, theaters like the Variety drag down the neighborhoods around them. Once restored, though, the buildings can have a huge energizing effect.
“Restaurants move in. Residential takes off,” said Tom Einhouse, a construction and preservation expert who worked at Playhouse Square for decades. “There’s so many things that happen from the creativity in the neighborhood. It’s more than just commodity space.”
He remembers what Downtown Cleveland’s theater district looked like in the early 1980s. The buildings had just been saved from the wrecking ball. The marquees were gone.
Early on, Einhouse walked out of the Ohio Theatre and nearly ran into a police officer who was chasing a bank robber down Euclid Avenue. Over 44 years, he played a key role in transforming that stretch of street, bringing once-threatened landmarks back to life.
He still gets a thrill when he walks into a dilapidated theater and sees the potential. If buildings like the Variety aren’t saved, the loss will be more than just bricks and mortar.
“We lose all that authentic, historic fabric,” he said. “That’s why it’s so important. … Everything that gets built around those, it’s gone. You’ve got flat parking lots.”
Flamos isn’t the first person to try to save the Variety. But she got closer than anyone has.
That isn’t clear from the view at West 118th Street and Lorain Avenue.
The complex, which includes several storefronts and a dozen apartments on Lorain, doesn’t look much different than it did in 2022, when Flamos purchased the property for $450,000 from a neighborhood nonprofit group.
RELATED: New owners setting the stage for a rebirth of venerable Variety Theatre
Aside from painting murals on the boarded-up windows and doors, most of her work was done behind the scenes. Pulling together federal and state tax credits for preserving historic buildings. Chasing government grants and loans. Winning state money to clear out asbestos and clean up the buildings, which span a city block.
“I really believe that all the work, and all the blood, sweat and tears that have gone into this – even though it doesn’t look like any of that happened – that it was for something,” she said. “That it’s part of this building’s path.”
‘It’s doable. I still believe that.’
Flamos had experience as an entrepreneur, running a busy venue.
Before buying the Variety, she spent a decade as the co-owner and operator of Mahall’s, a 1920s Lakewood bar and bowling alley. She kept the vintage vibe but livened up the programming, bringing in concerts and events.
That’s what she hoped to do at the Variety, too, with an aesthetic of arrested decay – preserving the mottled plaster, for example, without making everything look new again. She wanted to bring live music back to the auditorium, with a capacity of roughly 2,000 people.
But Mahall’s was a turnkey business. The Variety was a real estate project – a $14 million makeover being shouldered by a first-time developer.
Flamos had plenty of passion and creativity.
She ran out of money. And time.
“I wasn’t the right person,” she said. “And that’s OK. Isn’t it?”
She ultimately faced a $1.5 million funding gap. Lenders and investors weren’t comfortable with her plan to be both the developer and the theater’s operator.
“It just didn’t pencil. It was too risky,” she said.
So she launched a search for someone else to lease and run the theater. Flamos said she made headway with two potential tenants, a major live-entertainment presenter and a fast-growing venue developer and operator. But those discussions didn’t lead to a deal.
By late 2024, she knew she was done. The Variety hit the market at an asking price of $1.2 million – with a $1.4 million state brownfield clean-up grant still in place and completed architectural drawings.
There are plans circulating to tear down the theater and replace it with apartments, while renovating the existing two-story residential and retail portion of the complex on Lorain.
But the real estate listing, through the Cushman & Wakefield-Cresco Real Estate brokerage, focuses on preservation – the chance to rescue a city landmark that’s also listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Flamos said a local buyer group is interested, but there's no deal yet.
“When they walk into this space, they’re moved,” she said of everyone who takes a tour. “It’s fabulous. And you cannot build a venue like this.”
‘Not possible for just the for-profit sector’
At the Ariel LaSalle Theater on Cleveland’s East Side, event bookings are trickling in, for everything from weddings to a K-pop concert to a Star Wars-parody burlesque show. But traffic is still slow compared to owner Radhika Reddy’s other venues in the city.
Reddy, an accountant and real estate developer, bought the LaSalle in 2023, after it had already been renovated and reopened by a nonprofit. She’s passionate about historic buildings, but she probably wouldn’t have tackled this one from scratch.
“Unless we received huge subsidy, I wouldn’t have been able to do it,” Reddy said, citing the high cost of construction and the modest rents in the Collinwood neighborhood.
“It’s not possible for just the for-profit sector to make these happen,” she said. “You need a combination of public-private partnerships.”
She’s getting by because she’s both the owner and the operator – the model Flamos originally hoped to pursue. Plus, Reddy doesn’t have any debt on the property, where rents from a few storefronts on East 185th Street and apartments upstairs supplement events.
“Any business, it takes time, three, four years to build it,” she said. “So we are trying.”
Over at the Capitol Theatre, in the Gordon Square Arts District, a group of advocates and community members recently formed to consider the future.
Owned by the nonprofit Northwest Neighborhoods Community Development Corp. and leased to Cleveland Cinemas, the three-screen theater has been struggling like many movie theaters across the country.
The recent debut of a locally made queer slasher movie sold out. Some weekends are good. Others aren’t.
This month, Northwest Neighborhoods announced the formation of a stewardship board to come up with a strategy to ensure the theater survives. Board chair Nina Holzer said nothing’s going to change overnight. The goal is to come up with a plan this summer.
“The importance of these spaces is that you’re getting to be around your neighbors … people who may be different than you, sharing a cultural experience,” Holzer said.
That connection to community is what Flamos wanted to build at the Variety. But the complexities of pre-construction – all the number-crunching and deal-structuring that can take years, with no guarantee of success – got in the way.
She’s still in love with that building, though.
And she hasn’t given up hope.
“I might not be the person that takes it to the finish line,” she said. “But I still 100 percent believe in this building. In this neighborhood. And what could be.”
