CLEVELAND — In Little Italy, the Mayfield Theatre has been sitting silent for almost 40 years — languishing in the heart of a historic district.
Nearby business owners are fed up. They’re tired of looking at the blight. And as the community prepares for Monday’s Columbus Day parade, neighbors are raising a ruckus.
“Something needs to happen. Something needs to change,” said Domenic Corbo, the fourth-generation operator of family-owned Corbo’s Bakery next door. “Unfortunately, somewhere down the line it is getting held up, over and over again. Year after year.”
The theater, which opened in 1923, is a local landmark. That status protects it — but only to a point. Cleveland's building department condemned the brick structure a year ago. That means the city could swoop in and demolish it if the owner doesn’t fix it up.
Terry Tarantino bought the theater at a foreclosure sale in 2005, according to public records. He’s also the owner of La Dolce Vita, a restaurant down the street.
During an interview, Tarantino said he’s working with investors on a redevelopment plan, which he expects to submit to the city in 60 to 90 days.
“We want to build a unique event center that can accommodate people from parties of 25 to 350,” he said, describing a restored building with a rooftop garden.
Some of his neighbors are skeptical. They’re tired of ideas and want action.
“I’ll bet you a dinner… that nothing will ever happen,” said Gerti Memeti, the owner of Mia Bella, a nearby restaurant. “It’s two decades and counting I’ve been hearing the same stories. It’s nothing new.”
The city sent an inspector to the property this week to investigate a complaint about falling debris.
“Our inspection identified an area of concern on the marquee,” Tom Vanover, the city’s chief building official, confirmed in an email. “We were able to contact the owner and express that if he failed to correct the issue, the department would use our abatement authority to mobilize a contractor to address it.”
Tarantino lined up workers to look over the marquee and clean up graffiti on the battered front doors and blank movie poster displays. He said those repairs will be complete by Columbus Day, when thousands of people traditionally flock to Mayfield Road.
But there’s still the bigger problem of the theater’s future.
“It went past an eyesore. We’re past that,” said Nancy Shaffer, the manager of Mama Santa’s, a family-owned pizzeria across the street.
She tells her customers not to walk under the marquee if they’re crossing Mayfield to grab cannoli or cassata cake at Corbo’s after dinner.
Shaffer keeps thinking about the recent collapse of a cornice and a building façade in nearby Cleveland Heights.
“I don’t want anything to fall on someone or damage someone’s car,” she said. “It’s more of a safety thing now. … I hope they can either restore it or put something else in. But do something. And if you don’t want to do anything, fix the outside.”
'A lot of fond memories'
An Italian-born shopkeeper named Michele Mastandrea built the Mayfield Theatre a century ago, during a wave of theater construction in Cleveland. He and his wife lived in the apartment upstairs for decades.
The theater showed Italian-language films and second-run mainstream movies.
“When I migrated to Cleveland in 1956, I have memories of my parents taking me to the Mayfield Theatre and seeing Italian movies,” said Joe Marinucci, the executive director of the Little Italy Redevelopment Corp., a community development organization in the neighborhood. “So from the perspective of the community, there are a lot of fond memories of people who grew up here, who lived here.”
In the late 1950s, after Mastandrea and his wife died, the building became an art-house theater. It closed, reopened and changed, morphing into a live performance venue, then a vintage and silent-film showplace and, finally, the New Mayfield Repertory Cinema.
The theater shut its doors for good in 1985, according to public records.
In 2013, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places, making the building eligible for federal and state tax credits for a revival.
“It’s an important façade on Mayfield Road,” Marinucci said. “An adaptive reuse that allows that façade to be saved and the marquee potentially to be saved, I think, would be a huge plus in terms of the commercial district.”
Tarantino said that, for years, he didn’t have the money to renovate the theater.
“My business wasn’t really great pre-Covid. And then I got stuck in a real hole during Covid," he said.
Still, he’s been unwilling to part with the property, which he’s using for storage.
“I could have sold that building for a good amount of money and just had it knocked down and somebody build condos there,” Tarantino said. “And I didn’t do it. OK?”
The building’s landmark designation makes it hard for a developer to raze it. The Cleveland Landmarks Commission would have to approve a demolition request – and any plans for redevelopment.
The city doesn’t have to follow the same process as a private owner, though. And there are two ways to deal with a condemned building. One is to renovate it, to fix the code violations. The other is to tear it down.
Vanover, the chief building official, said the city is considering next steps – “pursuing enforcement escalation due to the inactivity.” That could range from imposing civil or criminal fines to launching an emergency demolition, where the city would do the work and send Tarantino the bill.
It’s still unclear what City Hall will do, though, and when.
'The number one hot topic'
On Thursday morning, Kristen Barlow walked her dog, Wilbur, under the marquee.
She moved to Cleveland last spring, into an apartment complex next door to the theater. From the beginning, the vacant building stood out.
“The rest of the neighborhood is so vibrant,” she said. "And there's not a lot of empty storefronts. ... Really anything other than just kind of a blank building with graffiti on it would be really nice."
Councilman Blaine Griffin, who represents the area, is getting an earful from neighbors.
“I had a meeting with the block club presidents the other day, and this was the number one hot topic,” he said.
He pointed out that Little Italy isn’t the only neighborhood grappling with the future of a 1920s theater.
In Collinwood, it took years – and nonprofit intervention – to revitalize the LaSalle on East 185th Street. A redevelopment of the Variety Theatre on Lorain Avenue in the Jefferson neighborhood is finally coming together, after decades of vacancy.
And the old Moreland Theater is still sitting empty on Buckeye Road, where a community development group is trying to make it the centerpiece of a Black arts, culture and innovation district.
“These are older theaters,” Griffin said. “They’re hard to find end users. And they’re hard to develop. And it costs a lot of money to develop them.”
He’s been talking to Tarantino about how to move things forward.
“The residents and business owners have a sense of urgency,” Griffin said. “I have a sense of urgency. We want to see something happen fast.”
Tarantino said he’s taking the situation seriously. He conceded that the theater is an eyesore. “Any empty building can be a potential hazard,” he said. “I agree with that.”
Still, he believes it can be a gem again.
“It’s kinda like my own little ‘Cinema Paradiso,’” Tarantino said, alluding to a critically acclaimed 1988 Italian film where the movies play a pivotal role.
Next door, Corbo doesn’t want to see the theater get torn down.
“Tradition’s very strong in our family, and this building has been around as long as we’ve been in business,” he said.
But he doesn’t want to keep watching a piece of the past rot, either.
“I’m here every single day,” Corbo said. “And all I want is people that need to be responsible for their properties to be responsible for their properties.”
