Playhouse Square's $100 million restoration project

The National Trust for Historic Preservation's blog just wrote this feature of Playhouse Square, which turns out to have been the largest theater restoration project of all time, coming in at over $100 million (in 1980s dollars!) Playhouse Square is the second-largest performing arts center in the country, trailing only behind New York's Kennedy Center. To be sure, it's a lot prettier, too.

Cleveland’s PlayhouseSquare Theaters Set Stage for World’s Largest Theater Restoration Project

Critics called him crazy.
Even well-wishers who offered Ray Shepardson sincere support couldn’t believe the school administrator’s crusade to preserve four historic theaters in Cleveland, Ohio, could possibly succeed.
But it did -- and then some.
Today, Shepardson’s once improbable effort is Cleveland’s crown jewel: His rescue not only initiated the world’s largest theater restoration project (totaling some $100 million), it transformed that quartet of crumbling venues into a revitalized PlayhouseSquare, one of the largest performing-arts complexes in the country (second only to New York’s Lincoln Center).

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