The Galleria at Erieview sits at 1301 East 9th Street in downtown Cleveland, Ohio, a two-level glass-roofed mall attached to a 40-story office tower. It opened in October 1987 with a food court and shops on both levels.
The plan called for a department store at one end of the building. It was never signed, so the smaller stores opened alone. The Galleria never leased more than 60 of its 70 spaces.
The space went to tenants who weren't retailers. A bank absorbed a block of the ground floor and cut into the floor above it. A YMCA moved into two levels of former shop space.
The bank closed its branch in January 2026. Few tenants are open in the building now, and only one of them is a store. The second floor is shut off. The escalators are cordoned off.
The Galleria opened without its anchor
Jacobs, Visconsi & Jacobs bought Erieview Tower in 1985 and decided the plaza in front of it should be a mall.
That plaza was the open ground I. M. Pei's 1960 plan had laid on the axis between the tower and East 9th Street, with a reflecting pool, fountains, and trees sitting over the underground garage.
The $45 million building that went up in its place removed all of it for good.
The Galleria at Erieview opened on October 15, 1987 at 1301 East 9th Street in downtown Cleveland, Ohio, a two-level glass-roofed shopping center attached to the 40-story tower.
Three barrel vaults of glass ran the length of the central court.
The front on East 9th was a wide arch of glass and granite, and inside, palms rose past the second-floor walkways toward the skylight.
The building still stands in 2026.
The plan behind it promised 70 shops and services, a large food court, and a department store filling one end of the building.
The developers never secured a tenant for that end. The small stores and the food-court counters opened without one.
60 of 70 spaces, then the chains left
Within months of opening, the Galleria had 60 of its 70 retail and restaurant spaces leased.
On March 29, 1990, the Avenue at Tower City opened inside the old Union Terminal with about 110 stores on three levels.
Downtown Cleveland had a second enclosed mall less than three years after the first one.
The food court filled anyway, and not only with customers.
Its tables were common seating for the mall, so people could use them whether they bought lunch there or not.
Shoppers sat there. Mall walkers sat there. Office workers brought their own food.
Mall employees cleared the tables, collected the trays, and handled the trash. After hours, the same space could be used for charity dinners.
The stores were another matter. Eddie Bauer, Williams-Sonoma, Victoria's Secret, Express, and The Limited all traded in the Galleria.
By January 2003, all five were gone, with the losses concentrated in the previous two years.
Management began filling empty bays with local businesses, offices, services, and events.
Dollar Bank cuts through the second floor
Weddings came first.
Around 2005 staff started hanging curtains around the food court for them, and as the bookings grew, the large red soffit running around the room was repainted.
Scrooge's Night Out and other big charity gatherings used the same floor.
Dollar Bank made the permanent change.
Part of the upper floor at East 9th and St. Clair disappeared as several former stores on both levels were gutted and joined into a banking complex.
By December 2008, the roughly 50,000-square-foot facility was open.
Inside, the 26-foot glass-tile lion above the teller line had the vault directly behind it.
The hall climbed about 35 feet, while the training and meeting rooms nearby held about 125 people.
A run of shop fronts on the building's busiest corner was now one tenant, and the floor that had been above it was gone.
A hen display, then a lap pool
By March 2010, Gardens Under Glass was growing food in the vacant mall on a $30,000 grant.
A cart near the first-floor escalators held lettuce and other greens. Old jewelry carts became rolling beds.
Hydroponic equipment went in under the atrium glass, followed by a 12-by-20-foot greenhouse.
Herbs, strawberries, cucumbers, and kale all grew there. One empty storefront held live hens.
By February 2012 the mall around the garden was down to eight retail stores and eight food-court vendors, from 60 of 70 retail and restaurant spaces leased when it opened.
The garden had problems of its own. Aphids got into the crop, and 10,000 ladybugs were released to deal with them.
Stone Oven was buying roughly a pound of basil a week for pesto near the end. Gardens Under Glass came out in December 2012.
The greenhouse was dismantled, the hydroponic equipment was returned, the solar equipment was removed, and the bays went back to standing empty.
What replaced the shops was bigger and slower.
The Cleveland Hungarian Heritage Museum had opened on the second level in March 2003, and on August 29, 2014 it closed that space and moved down to the first floor, nearer the doors and whatever traffic was left.
The Parker Hannifin Downtown YMCA then took about 40,000 square feet of former retail across two levels and opened to members on March 21, 2016, with a three-lane lap pool, sauna and steam rooms, a spinning studio, and about 75 cardio machines.
A swimming pool ran through space built for stores, and neither of the building's two largest tenants sold anything.
The Galleria is down to few tenants
By December 2022 Winking Lizard Tavern was preparing to move across the street.
Inside the Galleria, about five spaces still appeared occupied, while the food court and the whole second-floor retail level had been closed off.
The Browsing Room Bookstore & Cafe opened on December 9, 2023 in the old Williams-Sonoma storefront, selling new, used, and rare books with coffee and a kitchen behind the counter.
It opened into a mall with no working retail circuit around it. By early 2025 the interior was close to empty.
Empty shop windows lined the mall, the escalators were blocked from use, and crews were gutting office floors in the attached tower.
Dollar Bank's regional staff had left for Oswald Tower in 2022, and the branch that took the corner in 2008 closed at the end of business on January 2, 2026.
About $217.6 million in residential and hotel financing closed on the campus in August 2026, paying for a 210-room W hotel, 215 apartments, a ballroom, and more than 450 underground parking spaces in and under the tower.
Meeting space from the hotel is planned to extend into the Galleria. What the rest of the building becomes hasn't been announced.
The YMCA is open seven days a week, the Hungarian museum keeps hours Wednesday through Friday, and the bookstore sends people in through the automatic doors on East 9th Street or the St. Clair doors beside the gym.
The East 12th Street entrance is open on weekdays only.
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