Famicos Notre Dame Building: Roman Catholic Notre Dame Academy - Cleveland, OH
Ohio
Famicos Notre Dame Building, affordable senior housing Cleveland, OH
Credit: www.famicos.org
PROJECT DETAILS
Project Name: Famicos Notre Dame Building
Historic Name: Notre Dame Academy
Denomination: Roman Catholic, Order of the Sisters of Notre Dame
Architect: William Jensen
Construction Date: 1915
Date of Closure: 1964/1978
Date of Reuse: 1999
Address: 1325 Ansel Road Cleveland, OH 44106
Neighborhood: Glenville, Hough and St. Clair- Superior
Reuse: (Principal) 21 units of low income housing on the first floor and 52 units of low income elderly housing on upper floors. (Secondary) Health and child care services/offices.
Building Size: 103,000 sq. ft.
Project Cost: $9.7 million/ $94 per sq. ft.
Financing: Historic Tax Credits through National Equity Fund City of Cleveland Cleveland Housing Trust Fund HUD Famicos capital campaign State of Ohio grant Enterprise Foundation
Designation: Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, 1988.
Significance: Played a unique role in the history of the city of Cleveland, the Archdiocese and the lives of many Catholic women.
Recognition: National Trust/HUD Secretary’s Award for Excellence in Historic Preservation, 2001.
Through most of the 20th century, school children in Cleveland’s Glenville neighborhood walked to Notre Dame Academy, a towering Gothic Revival style building that for years was a stunning community centerpiece. Built in 1915 to school Catholic girls, the academy’s architecture was designed to match the style of nearby Rockefeller Park.
Then, due to lack of investment, suburban flight and rising poverty, the school closed in 1964 and deteriorated rapidly. It was sold by the Sisters of Notre Dame to the Cleveland Board of Education, operating as the Lulu Diehl Junior High School, and was subsequently abandoned in 1978. The city tried many times to attract investors, but it wasn’t until the late 1990s that the Famicos Foundation stepped in and began a restoration that not only brought the academy back to life as affordable senior housing, it also fueled a powerful neighborhood rebirth.
In the mid-1990s, Cleveland’s poverty rate was more than 40 percent. The Famicos Foundation, which provides housing to Cleveland’s families, had already reclaimed more than 100 vacant lots in the neighborhood, also helping organize youth activities, safety programs and community projects. Recognizing the potential in the abandoned academy building, Famicos and hundreds of donors assembled federal, city and private funds to turn the building into 73 affordable senior housing units, as well as community services center and Famicos headquarters.
“The revitalization of Notre Dame Academy was the catalyst that helped bring its neighborhood back to life,” said Richard Moe, president of the National Trust. “Now, seniors can have affordable housing in the community’s most magnificent landmark. It’s a real testament to the economic power of preservation.”
In the mid-1990s the former school became part of the Rockefeller Park Neighborhood Revitalization Strategy for conversion into homes for independent elderly people. Famicos Foundation, a nonprofit with Catholic origins, agreed to take on the project. The building now stands as an important representation of a past era while serving some of the neediest residents of Cleveland. Due to the ambitious and tenacious efforts of a local community development corporation called the Famicos Foundation, in 1999 the Notre Dame Academy building was converted to 73 low-income independent living senior apartments with a fully restored exterior.
In addition to providing affordable housing units, Famicos completed construction of a Community Service Center on the ground floor of the Academy in 2002. The Famicos Foundation, a nonprofit community housing development organization, was founded in 1970 to distribute furniture, clothing and food to the needy. Today, their mission is to provide affordable housing to very low-income families in the Cleveland area by specifically targeting families that earn less than 30 percent of the median area income.
The design challenge for the architect team was to restore the severely neglected school to its former glory. Deferred maintenance, abandonment and subsequent vandalism had had a negative impact on the majority of the building, but important architectural details still remained. The floors in the central corridors were laid with pink marble and decorative columns supported high, expansive vaulted ceilings.
The configuration of classrooms and an English basement allowed for easy adaptation to independent and spacious apartment units. Sandvick Architects worked with the Famicos Foundation to make each unit handicap accessible and retained five units for mobility hearing and/or visually impaired residents. The project has achieved a phenomenal success not only in the rehabilitation of a neglected building but also in the improvement of the tenants’ lives. The residents have access to many different group activities as well as transportation provided for shopping and field trips. The layout of the former school provides easily navigated hallways and corridors and space for meetings and group activities.
The primary funding for the $9.7 million project came from HUD 202 Supportive Housing program funds, Historic Tax Credits through the National Equity Fund, Low Income Housing Tax Credits, and monies from a weatherization grant. Even though additional investment funds were contributed from the City of Cleveland Housing Trust Fund, the project still had a $1.5 million gap to cover for total construction costs. Showing their dedication to the project, the Famicos Foundation pledged its own endowment to allow the project to continue while they undertook an ambitious capital campaign.
By the time the project was completed in 1999, twelve of the houses across the street had also undergone their own renovation and upgrades.
Turning an abandoned building into a renovated apartment building has cemented the neighborhood’s stability by increasing affordable and high-quality living units. With the dedication of the Famicos Foundation and neighbors in the area, housing prices are improving and businesses are improving.
For more information contact:
Famicos Foundation
1325 Ansel Road
Cleveland, OH 44113
(216) 791-6476
