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It takes a village to house Cleveland advertising firm Wyse in new downtown digs
By Michelle Jarboe, The Plain Dealer January 21, 2010
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The first floor of the old department store at 668 Euclid Ave. used to be a cavern, its 17-foot-high pockmarked ceilings coated with construction dust.
Now, that space bustles with the activity of a small village, whose residents polish television spots, marketing plans and branding strategies under tin and fiberglass roofs. Wyse, an advertising agency, has transformed the empty box into a community of one-room homes. Employees gather in conference rooms covered in rough-hewn cedar or settle into chairs on a cozy patio behind frosted windows.
Wyse moved its 85 employees to the ground floor of the 668 Euclid complex in late November. The agency had been located just a few blocks away, in the Landmark Office Towers at Tower City Center.
"We're less of an ivory tower company now," said Michael Marino, the agency's president and chief executive officer. "We're more of a part of things."
The agency is a linchpin of a $65 million redevelopment project, dubbed the Residences at Six Six Eight Euclid Avenue. The complex, which stretches between Euclid and Prospect avenues, includes 236 apartments above ground-floor offices, a restaurant, a health club and a sports bar. The entire project could be finished by mid-April.
After years of construction on the street and the building, passersby on Euclid finally can see the historic facade of the former William Taylor Son & Co. department store. In early January, workers pulled down the scaffolding that shrouded the building. The front doors are open, leading visitors to Wyse's 25,000-square-foot offices and the permanent apartment-leasing office that developer K&D Group of Willoughby opened this month.
Ground-floor construction on the Prospect Avenue side will make way for Titans Gym and the Caddyshack Lounge, a sports bar with golf simulators and a pro shop. Zinc, a French-American bistro, is scheduled to open in mid-April.
On the upper floors, tenants have signed leases for 100 apartments, 70 of which are occupied. The Prospect side of the complex is full, and K&D has opened two floors above Euclid Avenue. The remaining apartments are scheduled to open by March.
"That block now is pretty well completed," said Doug Price, K&D's president and chief executive officer. "It's fun to see the end, but it's sort of sad, because we're used to living in the heart of construction."
The construction has not disrupted Wyse, where Marino said employees have been working more efficiently in their new space. Each of the agency's departments, from social media to sales, has its own neighborhood, with different rooflines, textures, colors and materials. A dozen meeting areas, from a spacious conference room to a nook with a small table and chairs, are scattered throughout the offices to encourage employees to collaborate and interact.
Workers who previously spent their days in Tower City Center are leaving the office more, to explore the city and to return with take-out menus and stories about downtown businesses they'd never noticed before.
"This is like the Cleveland that I was hoping I would live in," Marino said of 668 Euclid and the surrounding neighborhood. "This kind of reflects what Cleveland could be like."
