wfn.org | UCC may add hotel space with next-door building

[powellb@ucc.org]

March 6, 1997
United Church of Christ 
Hans Holznagel
(216) 736-2214          
E-mail:  holznagh@ucc.org
Laurie Bartels
(216) 736-2213
E-mail:  bartelsl@ucc.org                       
On the World Wide Web:  http://www.ucc.org 
                              
Probable purchase of next-door building would expand church
agency's downtown Cleveland hotel

      CLEVELAND -- The probable purchase of a five-story
building at 631 Huron Road in downtown Cleveland would enable
a national agency of the United Church of Christ to add a 
restaurant and more rooms to the hotel it plans to build near 
Gund Arena and Jacobs Field.
      The United Church Board for Homeland Ministries, with
offices in the UCC's national building at 700 Prospect Ave.,
today (March 6) sought city design-review approval to expand
its planned hotel to include the building next door, which
currently houses Coaches Restaurant and the under-construction
Gateway Place condominiums.
      The church agency is negotiating with the owner of 631
Huron Road regarding a purchase, said Robert P. Noble, a
general secretary at the United Church Board for Homeland
Ministries and the coordinator of the hotel project.
      If the planned purchase goes through and city approvals
are granted, the hotel -- which first gained city approval
last fall at seven stories and 93 rooms -- would expand to 141
rooms.  That total would result from the addition of an eighth
floor to the main part of the hotel and the creation of large
hotel suites at the adjoining 631 Huron building.
      Groundbreaking at the site, which is a parking lot
behind the church's 700 Prospect Ave. offices, is targeted for
April 26.  The church agency now hopes to open the hotel in
the spring of 1998.
      The hotel will be open to the public, but national
agencies of the United Church of Christ also see it as a good
means of containing costs of church-related meetings. 
National UCC boards and agencies, which would get below-market
room rates at the new hotel, currently use an estimated 5,000
hotel room-nights per year for meetings in greater Cleveland. 
Homeland Board officials stress that no "offering plate"
dollars will be used to build the hotel or purchase the
building next door.
      The 1.5-million-member United Church of Christ, with
more than 6,100 local churches in the United States and Puerto
Rico, is a 1957 union of the Evangelical and Reformed Church
and the Congregational Christian Churches.  Its national
offices have been in Cleveland since 1990.  Its United Church
Board for Homeland Ministries conducts programs in such areas
as racial and social justice, evangelism and local church
development, higher education and the publishing of books,
music and church-school curricula.
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