CLEVELAND — Downtown Cleveland could have a new restaurant and entertainment venue, with a focus on viral social media posts, coming around Memorial Day.
Filter is the latest restaurant from Kyler Smith, who already owns The Sauce in University Heights and Downtown.
Filter will go into the ground floor of the historic Perry-Payne Building where Take 5 Rhythm and Jazz used to be.
"The name 'Filter' comes with a visual dining experience where a lot of Instagram-able moments will happen," Smith said.
He says he’s adapting the idea from destinations he’s seen in Miami and Los Angeles with curated locations inside the venue to encourage people to post their experience to social media, essentially working as free marketing for the restaurant.
“Just around the city, it’s going to be that place that you want to go because it’s going to be popular,” Smith said.
The Perry-Payne Building was built in the late 1800s and was office space for more than a century. In 2021, it has apartments upstairs with retail space on the ground floor. It’s around the corner from the Warehouse District and it’s just about a block away from the open parking lots where Sherwin Williams plans on constructing its new Downtown Headquarters.
That puts a lot of potential customers just a few blocks away from his doorstep at Downtown Cleveland.
“I’m building it for the everyday person that wants to sit down, have a good meal, and it’s going to be affordable,” said Smith. “We’re going to have a $25 dish, a $30 dish.”
That’s why Smith says even though most people are waiting for a COVID-19 vaccine in Ohio and across the nation, he’s launching a new restaurant.
“Even during the pandemic, it still doesn’t scare me because I know people are itching to get out,” Smith said.
While other businesses have to adjust to new regulations, he says his build out is addressing COVID-19 protocol already, including garage doors that will open out to the street, improving air flow.
“We could actually build for [the pandemic],” said Smith. “So we already have the social-distancing dividers, we’re already doing the garage doors.
Smith plans to open to the public around Memorial Day with a soft opening a few weeks before.
Bridgeworks Update
New renderings show that the residential/retail/hotel space planned for the corner of West 25th Street and Detroit Avenue look considerably different from the original plan.
The updated plans show the hotel space on top of the residential units, with that extensive structure situated about 123 feet off of West 25th Street.
One of the big criticisms from the Landmarks Commission was about the height of the building in the original plans and how close it was to West 25th Street. Setting it back so far off the corner appears to be an attempt to address those concerns.
Bridgeworks will be presenting at Ohio City Design Review on Feb. 18th.
Irishtown Bend Update
The "Big 8" building is completely gone. It's the first building to come down as part of the demolition for the Irishtown Bend project.
Progressive Field is now visible from the sidewalk on the other side of West 25th Street.
Irishtown Bend is meant to increase mobility and connections from Ohio City into Tremont, Downtown Cleveland, and to the near West Side.
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